Independence Day Plague (25 page)

Mitchell put the gun down and picked up the red syringe, removing the cap with thumb and forefinger. Instantly, Talbot lunged forward, knocking him to the floor. Mitchell’s head banged against the cream marble tile. Pain shot through his head. Talbot rose up off him, one meaty hand clenched around the wrist that held the needle. Mitchell dropped the syringe, swinging his left up to block the punch aimed at his eyes. The two men rolled against the chair legs and grappled for the small plastic tube. Mitchell brought his knee up, rolling and kicking hard into the general’s side. Talbot flew against the near wall. Mitchell rolled over, searching for the syringe. Breathing hard, Talbot lunged across the floor, reaching for the gun on the table. As Talbot’s fingers closed on it, Mitchell grabbed the syringe and jabbed it into the general’s thigh, pushing the plunger down.

Talbot grunted and swung the gun around. He pressed it hard against Mitchell’s forehead before looking down at the syringe. Mitchell grinned. He sat up, raising his hands. Talbot leaned down and pulled the needle out of his leg. Keeping the gun level with Mitchell’s head, he slowly rose back to a standing position. “What the hell was that?”

Mitchell smiled wider, “Yersina Pestis.” He sat back to a relaxed kneeling position, lowering his hands to his lap.

“
Plague? You gave me the fucking plague?” His gun hand whipped up and punched the kneeling man with the barrel. Mitchell’s head shot back out of the way. The blow glanced off his jaw and blood ruptured from his lip. Talbot picked up the second syringe and held it up to the light. “What’s this? Penicillin? Streptomycin?”

Mitchell sat motionless and stared at the thin plastic tube.

Talbot swung the gun butt around and smacked it into his face again, “What's in it, you son of a bitch?”

Mitchell reeled back, blood spurting from his nose. “I’m impressed that you knew about the plague. That's more than Forester knew. Why don’t you just shoot yourself up with that and see what happens.”

Talbot swung on him again but this time Mitchell dodged the blow and grabbed the older man’s hand. The general stared at him for a few minutes and then curled his lips into a tight smile. “Black Death, huh? Rather stupid of you.” He stepped closer and placed the gun back against Mitchell’s temple. “I’ll just take care of you and then get myself a shot of a wide spectrum of antibiotics. The Black Death hasn’t killed anyone in industrial nations since the invention of penicillin. If you worked in a Bio Lab, you'd have known that.”

Talbot pressed the gun hard against the man’s head, forcing it backwards. Mitchell closed his eyes, sighing gently. Talbot squeezed the trigger. The gun clicked audibly. Mitchell pushed himself upward, driving his head into Talbot’s abdomen. The general flew back, smashing against the glass in the china case behind him. Mitchell drove a fist into the old man’s abdomen then snatched the gun away.

“
I never intended to shoot you. That would be too easy.” He hammered the man’s head back into the wooden struts of the cabinet until the man’s head lolled to one side. Blood streaked across the cabinet. Mitchell backed off and watched the general fall to his knees gasping for breath. Taking a thin nylon rope out of his pocket, Mitchell kneeled to tie the General’s hands behind his back. He then picked up the second syringe and uncapped it. Holding it above Talbot’s head, he squeezed the plunger. Liquid squirted across the man’s forehead and trickled down his face. “I wanted you to have hope, to think this was antibiotics. It is a terrible thing to have hope and then watch it die. It’s just tap water, nothing more. Now, I find myself not caring that you have hope or not. You robbed us of it. We died knowing you deserted us. Now, the only way you get to live is if I get you to a hospital soon enough.”

Mitchell swung a chair around and sat in front of the fallen man. He continued, “See, that’s the tortuous thing about hope. We had it at BL-4. As people lay dying in their beds from unimaginable pain, we all hoped someone would rescue us. After all, the product stayed there, ticking away like some damn freakish time bomb in the four cryo-units. Our work was too valuable, too deadly to be simply left behind. Everyone knew. They waited and hoped until the day their hope died in a sea of pain.”

“
I’m not telling you anything, you bastard.” Talbot mumbled.

“
That’s the spirit, General. Keep arguing and evading. The longer you take in telling me the truth, the more time for the bacteria to grow inside you. The Black Death traditionally takes two to ten days to incubate. Then the symptoms start to appear. Once the first black spot, the skin lesions, appear, then the mortality rate rises significantly.” He reached down, hoisted Talbot up by the lapels, and placed him in an oak chair.

The general’s head rolled back and blood smeared across the chair’s fabric. “I don’t know what you are talking about.” His words slurred together.

“
Fortunately for you, you don’t have that long. Plague was our first success. We vamped this little bug up. Fever and swelling of the lymph nodes will start in less than twenty-four hours. Lesions arrive shortly thereafter. It’s the weekend, General. I have days that I can sit here and watch you die.”

Mitchell watched the man’s eyes close and his head slumped to one side. Mitchell sighed. He shouldn’t have lost his temper. When the man’s breathing became deep and regular, Mitchell checked the head wound. It bled a lot but now slowed to ooze. The bones felt solid underneath. He grabbed the old man under the shoulders and hefted him up. The trip to the living room couch was short but Mitchell felt his muscles straining as he lowered the old man down. He moved a recliner opposite the couch and then settled in to wait.

Two hours passed before the general stirred. He blinked and squinted at the man across the coffee table. Two white pills and a glass of water were on the table within easy reach. He spoke low. “What do you want?”

Mitchell picked up the pills and handed them to the old man. “They’re only aspirin. I figured you would have a pounding headache.”

Talbot glared at him for a moment then finally took the aspirin with a swallow of water.

Mitchell placed the digital recorder between them and turned it on. “I want the truth. Why did you keep the last four bio labs open after all the other programs were shut down? We were the last one. I know that. Why not just let us rejoin society and disappear? We accepted our fate and we were prepared to fade into history.”

Talbot’s face looked ashen. “I can’t tell you anything.”

Mitchell took a sip from fresh drink in front of him. “Black Death killed what, millions of people during the Middle Ages? It led to the financial freedom of the Renaissance period. Did you know that the plague jumped from town to town through rats and fleas? People thought the cats caused it so they killed cats while the real enemies, the rat and mouse populations thrived. The fleas jumped from rodent to human. Good thing your dog is outside now. We wouldn’t want him spreading the contagion through this lovely neighborhood. Of course, you are now the main contaminant. Imagine how quickly this will spread when your officers or the police find you. It will probably kill main services like the police and the doctors at the hospital where they'll take your body. By the time they know what you have, it will be spreading through their homes, their streets and beyond.”

Mitchell leaned forward as the old man struggled to sit upright. “You’ve had a rather large dose of microbes, quite a bit more than the average flea bite. It won’t take long.”

“
You bastard.” He whispered.

“
Yes, general, I am. However, let’s not forget that you and Forester and others made me this way. I’m a mass murderer because of you. I killed most of my friends in those last days. They begged for mercy and I couldn’t watch them suffer. You’d be amazed at how easy killing is again after so much practice.”

“
You have no proof I was involved in anything.”

Mitchell nodded his head. “True, the weeks that I walked between houses feeding and caring for those I could, it never occurred to me to take a video record. I didn’t think of escape either because of the snipers that hid in the hills. Others tried of course and were shot off the fences. Of course, you understand what I’m talking about.” He pushed the picture of Talbot’s wife across the table. Mitchell guessed it was one of the last ones taken. The woman in the picture was smiling but thin and haggard with age, quite the opposite of most of the pictures on the mantel. “Your wife suffered for months as the cancer ate away at her. How did it make you feel to watch her die, knowing you couldn't do anything about it?”

He fished a picture of his family out of his wallet and placed it next to the framed photo. “Imagine my beautiful wife, my Caroline with her face red and swollen, the vessels in her skin breaking one by one. And my daughter, Katie. She was destined to go off to college next year. Instead, I watched her cry tears of blood. Watched her shake with pain as she died by my hand.” His voice cracked as he finished. “Forgive me if I didn’t gather pictures of them in that condition.”

“
We took pictures.” The general sat upright, eyes downcast staring at the two pictures side by side. He spoke softly. “The clean-up crews took photographs before bulldozing the place so we could complete our analysis. We needed human trials on Marburg. We wanted to learn something from the experiment then the deaths had meaning.” He looked up at the horror in Mitchell’s face. “I’d never seen anything like it. For what it's worth, I’m sorry they suffered.”

Mitchell’s eyes widened and he shook. His fist clenched white around the glass. Screaming, he threw the glass at the wall behind the general’s head. It exploded, showering liquid and glass bits over the carpet. He fought to control the rage, “‘We?! Who is we?” he said through his clenched jaws.

The general swung his legs off the couch and tried to stand up only to fall back again. His skin took on a gray pallor. Tears began to leak slowly down his rough cheeks. “I can’t tell you.”

Minutes passed as Mitchell fought to control his breathing and his anger. “You’re sorry,” he finally growled. “How I wish that meant something to me.” He pulled his jacket straight with a yank and sat down again.

“
You killed my dog?” The old man’s eyes closed in pain.

Mitchell sat back and sighed. The pictures of the wife and children, the couple together holding their pet. The dog was the general’s only companion now, his last connection to a fading life. “No General, she's still alive, just sleeping. I'm not the expert at lying like you are. I won’t hurt your dog. I don't kill innocents. That seems to be your expertise.”

“
Mrs. Noriega takes care of her while I’m gone. She’s good to her. She lives in unit 32, down the street.”

Mitchell nodded. “I understand.”

The general sat in silence for a few moments. “I can’t give you names. I can tell you everything else but I won’t tell you names. After more than thirty years in the service, my loyalty is all I have left. I won’t betray those men. My loyalty must mean something." He took a long shuddering breath, wiping his face with one thick hand. “Why should I tell you anything? What does it matter? You can’t get to the cryo-units. They’re too secure.”

“
It’s not up to me to find the cryo-units. The public must know they exist.”

“
There are no public records of any of the eight original bio labs existing past 2017. We made
s
ure of that. Orders came through to shut them down then, and to the eyes of the public, we did. We closed the first two immediately, publicly and then two a few years later. Their work eventually folded into the other labs. Those people transferred back into society through vet hospitals and the CDC. After that, we slowed down, making excuses to spend years closing each one and altering the designation of the remaining labs in the records. We diverted funds, set up false clinic fronts. The government doesn’t know anything about them now. If they find out about the lab or you, they’ll stop you from going public. There’ll be too much harm to the international policy. If they find you, they’ll kill you just to hush it all up again. I didn't invent killing risky personnel. The government often kills to keep its secrets. I’ll be held accountable of my actions before I'm executed but you’ll still be dead. You’ll gain nothing, son.”

Mitchell leaned back against his chair and crossed one leg over the other. “I need to know. What I do with the information is my business. If no one believes me then it doesn’t matter what you confess. If they kill me, well then my death's long overdue. It matters to you, however. The longer you stall in telling me, the longer the disease works through your system. The more symptoms you have by the time you start treatment, the less likely you’ll survive even with massive amounts of antibiotics. then there's your body. You'll be patient zero for the next world plague. It will spread from you, killing millions or even billions before it's stopped.” He paused and took another sip. “What’s it going to be, General? I can wait as long as I need to.”

“
Did you know that America slipped in economic superiority to third, behind China and India? It’s a well-known fact in most economic circles but not to the public. We predicted it about ten years back but no one did anything. Oh, we still have some of the wealthiest people in the world here, but the spread of wealth is thinner. Our economy polarizes between rich and poor. More importantly, steady stream of funds constantly flows out of the country and it's increasing. More foreign powers act as owners of U.S. companies than ever before.” Talbot sighed, shifting in his seat. He took a long pull from the water glass before dropping his hands back in his lap again.