Eden Plague - Latest Edition (23 page)

He swept the room with my eyes. “I think we need to spread the Plague. Come what may.”

A babble broke out, then calmed down after a minute. Daniel held up his hand for quiet.

“Most of what I just heard was, ‘why now?’ I’ll tell you why. First, Jenkins isn’t going to forget I killed his son. He
will
hunt us down.”

“So why not just turn yourself in?” asked Roger.

Daniel smiled at his brazen lack of couth, and waved back the glares directed his way. “It’s a fair question. The main answer is, that won’t stop them. Yes, he blames me personally, but he also can’t lose control of the power of the Eden Plague, so he will be do everything he can to find us before turning it over to his superiors and being cut out. So that’s the second thing. They will be researching. Jenkins will figure a way to pour resources into labs and scientists and within a year or two will probably be ahead of us. If he figures out how to inoculate against it, or how to get rid of the virtue effect, we lose all our leverage.”

Elise cried, “But then we won’t be a threat to him!”

Daniel shook his head. “Honey, we’ll always be a threat. We’re an uncontrolled power bloc with the potential to destabilize the world. And that leads to the third thing. They will find this place eventually. Despite all we can do, unless we seal up completely and never leave, something will happen. They will locate us, and they will come and take us all away to Guantanamo or someplace worse. We have to move soon. We have to blow it open so wide it can’t be suppressed.”

“So why not just put it out to the media?” Vinny asked. “I can make it go viral worldwide.”

“Without proof, that won’t mean a thing. It will just alert Jenkins to our plans. We
will
go to the media, but only after we have acted.”

“You are starting to sound like a terrorist, DJ,” Larry said with a smile, but Daniel could tell he was uneasy.

“Terrorists bring death and destruction as a way to get what they want,” Daniel disagreed. “I am proposing we bring life to millions – billions – of people. Call it insurgency, or a freedom fight. I don’t think there’s ever been anything quite like this before, but the closest I can think of is a war for independence. Spreading freedom and liberty, even though it upsets the established order.”

“So now we’re revolutionaries?”

Daniel nodded, undeterred. “We have to be. I have thought long and hard about this and I am willing to accept that responsibility. I can’t let the fear I am making a horrible mistake deter me from doing what I think is right. ‘That Others May Live’ has been my code my whole adult life. I know there will be unintended consequences. The Eden Plague will save a lot more lives than it loses.”

Silence prevailed for a time as everyone thought about what he had said.

“So how are we going to do it?” Roger asked, always the scientist.

Daniel held up a hand. “First, we have to agree to do it at all. To impose a solution on the world. To spread the Eden Plague against their will. Sure, a lot of sick people will welcome it. But a lot of people will get it without a choice – from us spreading it deliberately. From birth, even, as soon as pregnant carriers start having babies.” He looked over at Elise and smiled. “So I’m going to leave this room right now. I’ll be at the nearest hatch, enjoying the breeze. I’ll come back in at sundown or when someone calls for me. But you all have to talk it out and reach a consensus, without me to impose it. Because it might be the most important decision ever made.”

He turned on his heel and left the conference room, hearing the voices rising as soon as the door shut. He walked with a measured, fatalistic tread toward the nearest opening on the mountainside.

Daniel knew he should have just pushed it through. That’s what a military leader would have done. But this wasn’t a military operation anymore. He was leading a bunch of civilians, and they had to make their own decisions. Besides, Daniel thought there were enough in there that agreed with him to sway the rest. If not…he’d figure something out.

He jogged up flights of steps, just to burn off energy, and once he got to the hatch he opened it and sat down on a nearby log, within easy hearing distance of the telephone in the box just inside. He stared out over the low hazy West Virginia mountains, smelling the pine in the air, hearing the rustle of leaves in the breeze, wondering about the future.

It was less than a half hour before the phone rang. He took that as a good sign.

The conference room was silent as he reentered. He sat down in the empty chair at the head of the table, and deliberately did not look at Elise. He didn’t want people thinking he was politicking with his wife.

Spooky cleared his throat. “Mister Chairman,” he said softly, “I believe we are of accord together. We are willing to bear responsibility with you. We will spread the Plague.”

Daniel released the breath he’d been holding and smiled. Spontaneous applause broke out, a relaxation of their nervous tension. He took the breath back in, deeply. Now for the first test of their resolve and unity. “All right, that’s talking the talk. Can we all walk the walk?”

“Meaning what?” asked Vinny.

“Meaning…we have to infect everyone here to start.” Daniel reached over to a side table where a small bag rested, unnoticed until now. Pulling out a cloth, he unrolled it to reveal five small syringes.

He didn’t think they expected him to throw it in their faces like that – to take concrete action after an abstract decision. But as it slowly sank in, he could see the acceptance form on every face, most especially those who were not yet infected: Spooky, Vinny, Cassandra, Roger and Arthur.

Cassandra spoke first. “I’m in. I’m fine with it. I’ve seen what it can do. Shoot me up, doc.” She rolled up her sleeve.

Daniel took the first needle and walked over to her. Looking in her eyes for a moment and seeing no uncertainty, he plunged it in. She smiled, a little strained, but determined.

The rest rolled up their sleeves as well, and he got it done as quickly as he could, before anyone got cold feet. “Everyone’s seen the effects. Be prepared for the appetite. We have no shortage of food. Just eat what you feel like. And keep an eye on each other, in case of anything strange. But now that that’s done, we have to give it to everyone else in the bunker.”

“What, against their will?”

Daniel stared at Vinny, who had spoken. “We’re talking about doing it to the whole world. If we can’t do it to our own people, our own families, how can we justify doing it to everyone else in the world?”

There came another exchange of shocked glances. It was all becoming real to them, and fast. He’d had days and days to think it over and settle it in his mind, but they were getting steamrolled in real time. He had to do it this way, though, or the consensus might collapse.

“So what I propose doing, and you will need to ratify, is this. We start putting it in the drinks at our meals, and keep doing it until everyone is in. Nobody gets to opt out.” Daniel could tell some were very uncomfortable with this idea. The values of individual liberty and self-determination ran deep in American culture. He stamped on his own misgivings and forced the issue. “So that’s my first formal motion. I move the Bunker Council approve infecting everyone here, without their express permission.”

There was a pause. Then, “Seconded,” from Spooky. He shot a look at Vinh.

“All right, motion is on the floor. All in favor say ‘aye.’”

Ayes rang out, some tentative, but clear.

“Opposed?” Daniel waited for Vinny to object, but he didn’t. “All right, that’s settled. Now, here’s my first bureaucratic act as Chairman – watch this presentation.”

Turning on the computer screen, he laid it out for them then, in graphics and charts and pictures, how he proposed to plague the world. Coming to the conclusion, he looked around again, his hands clenched behind his back. “So now you’ve seen my plan, in outline. Everyone will get a chance to weigh in on the methods, on the how. But for the basic goals, I need to hear all inputs now, and I need everyone behind me one hundred percent on this.”

They talked and wrangled well into the evening, breaking for a meal and coming back, until they had worked through all the misgivings and everyone raised his or her hand and said, “Aye” again.

After that it was just details.

The Council spent the next week keeping peace and soothing hurt feelings as the Eden Plague took hold. The virtue effect made it simpler, and Daniel had counted on it. Better-balanced brains and kinder minds made it easier to accept the insult of their own destinies being hijacked for the greater good. Still, once everyone was confident they wouldn’t turn into zombies or pod people, their little community settled down remarkably well.

One afternoon Daniel looked in on the scientists, who had turned their efforts away from research, toward simply breeding as much virus as they could and making doses. They had enlisted the whole community, and there was a group of people in a big room next to the lab chattering away like a knitting circle. Except in this case instead of needles and yarn, they had hundreds of containers and were filling them with virus solution. Plastic water and soda bottles dominated. A few filled syringes – a few small ones but mostly large and heavy, with enormous needles, as if they were to inject horses. Part of the plan.

Elise came over when she spotted Daniel. “It’s a good thing the virus is hardy. Not like HIV, for example, which dies after a few hours in the air. This stuff is more like influenza. I sure wish we had time to make it airborne.” She looked accusingly at him.

“Sorry. We all agreed we couldn’t risk taking the time.”

“I know. We’re doing the best with what we have. At least it looks like simply ingesting a little bit is highly effective. Although injections use less.” She ran her hands through her hair.

“Yes, all but two people acquired it the first time around in the drinks, and those two got it the next time.”

“With a higher dose. We’re going to have to accept the fact that it’s not one hundred percent.”

“Anything over fifty and I’ll be happy.” He kissed her, a little longer and harder than was usual, and then moved on to “manage by walking around.” Elise watched him go wistfully, wishing they had time to just…be together.

Daniel checked up on Larry, Spooky and Vinny’s work on the Bunker. They and some of the other men were laboring away with the heavy equipment, digging a new tunnel, covering everything with rock dust. This was also part of the plan. Then Daniel tracked down Cassie. He found her working with her kids and a few of the Nguyen and Nightingale kids that had come in, an impromptu school. The room smelled like old-fashioned paste and new magic markers.

“Hey, Cassie.”

“You know you’re the only one who calls me that.”

“I like to be different. What do other people call you?”

“Cassandra, or Cass.”

“You wouldn’t look good in a mumu.”

“I’m not going to admit to being old enough to get that reference. Call me whatever you want.” She raised her voice. “Class, take a ten-minute recess.”

The kids bolted out the door.

“Okay, what is it?”

“I need your tradecraft. I want to go get my dad.”

She cocked her head. “Okay…you know they’ll be watching him. He’s your only living relative.”

Daniel sighed. “I know. Vinny did as much recon as he could via the web; it looks like they haven’t picked him up or anything.”

“He’s bait.”

“Yup.”

“Probably got everything wired and tapped.”

“Yup.”

“And you want me to figure out how to bring him in.”

“Yup.”

“Okay…well, I’m a bit out of practice but I think I can do it.” She smiled, a white shiny thing in her cherry-cheeked face. “By the way, I hate you.”

His eyes widened and he snorted. “Really? Why?”

“That damn Eden virus. Larry’s uncle Leroy is starting to look good to me.”

He laughed. “Well, he is a good-looking man for sixty.”

“He’s a good looking man for forty-five, which is about how old he looks now. And he’s been looking at me too. Do you think it’s too soon…” She put a finger in her mouth to bite the nail, a most un-Cassie-like thing.

He reached out to hug her. “Only you can decide that. Nobody here will hold it against you. This thing is making a whole new world, a whole new human biology.” He patted her, then let go to hold her at arms’ length. “What would Zeke have wanted?”

“Oh, I know. He was always so damn cheerful and understanding. Not my idea of a Green Beret when we met.”

“I’m sure you weren’t his idea of a CIA spymaster. So you have my blessing, whatever you do. Just remember, nine months later…” He let go of her, miming a big belly.

“Oh, God, that’s right. Well…I have pills, that may delay things.”

“Or the Plague may just laugh and run roughshod over your pills.”

“Okay, you’ve freaked me out enough. What about your father?”

“I don’t know. You’re the spy. Do some spy stuff. Make a plan of action for me to carry out.” Daniel pointed at little faces peeking in the door. “Your ten minutes is up. Come see me when you got something, hopefully in a day or two.” He waved on his way out to the children, who chorused, “Bye Mister Daniel!”

Kids can adapt to anything.

***

Spooky and Daniel sat in the old beat-up pickup truck they had bought for cash that morning, no questions asked. They had put up reflective sun shades in the windshield and door windows, and they watched through the gaps around the edges. Parked in the lot of David Markis’ Veterans of Foreign Wars hall, their vehicle blended right in. As the sun went down the old men and women started arriving. Some younger ones too, from the latest wars, but the VFW was a slowly-dying institution, held together by camaraderie and cheap drinks under club rules. The marquee out front said “Bingo Tonight,” and Daniel knew his dad never missed it.

“There he is,” he said as he watched his father get out of his Chrysler. David Markis looked pretty good for sixty-plus, still slim and spry, so different from Daniel’s more muscular physique.