Ancestor

Book by Sigler Scott

Paul Fischer had always pictured the end of the world being a bit more . . . industrial. Loud machines, cars crashing, people screaming, guns a-blazing. Perhaps a world- breaking bomb shattering the earth into bits. But here in Greenland? Nothing but packed snow, endless rocks, and the towering white vistas of glaciers sitting high on the horizon. No cities burning, no abandoned cars, none of that nonsense. Just a tiny virus, and some pigs.

Paul hopped out of the UH- 60 Black Hawk he li cop ter and onto a snowcovered field lit up by the breaking dawn. A woman in an air force jacket waited for him, fur- lined hood tight around her head to ward off the cold and the stinging wind.

She snapped a salute. “Col o nel Fischer?”

Paul nodded and casually returned the salute.

“Second Lieutenant Laura Burns, Col o nel. General Curry is waiting for you. This way, sir.”

She turned and walked toward three white Quonset huts, their curved roofs blending into the landscape. Two tunnels connected the huts, completing the little human hamster town that had gone up less than twenty four hours earlier. He heard the hum of a diesel generator, saw the curve of two satellite dishes mounted on top of the huts.

Paul followed the girl, their shadows blending together as a long, broken gray shape moving across churned- up white snow. He wanted to get inside, hoped it was heated — these cold temps raised hell with his left knee. Paul absently wondered if the young lieutenant was married, if she was the kind of girl his son would find interesting. He was starting to wonder if the boy would ever settle down and get to the business of making some grandchildren that Paul could spoil rotten.

Overhead, a pair of F-16s shot by, their jet roar echoing off the valley floor. Probably a squadron out of Reykjavík, in to enforce a no- bullshit no- fly zone that had gone up shortly after Novozyme sounded the biohazard alarm.

As he walked, Paul looked out into the shallow valley. Two miles away, he could make out the Novozyme facility: a main building that contained research labs and housing for the staff, a landing strip, light poles, metal guard tower, two small, unblemished sheet- metal barns for the pigs and a head- high electric fence that surrounded the entire compound.

The girl — Second Lieutenant Burns, Paul mentally corrected himself — led him to the middle hut. No airlock. There hadn’t been time to set up a full temporary biohazard center, so the guys at Thule Air Force Base had shipped out the communications and command part of a portable Harvest Falcon setup. Not that it mattered much. Intel was almost positive that the viruses hadn’t escaped the Novozyme facility.

The key word being almost.

Paul opened the door and stepped into the heated interior. General Evan Curry looked up, waved Fischer over to the bank of monitors that covered the rear wall. Several American soldiers sat at consoles in the cramped space. A few ranking Danes stood and watched.

Curry had the permanent scowl and gray- peppered buzz cut of the typical Hollywood general, but he strayed from the script with his five- footfive stature and deep- black skin. The only image that mattered, however, was the shine from his four stars.

“Hello, Paul.” Curry extended his hand for a firm shake. “I’d love to say it’s good to see you again, but this is just as bad as last time. That was . . .what, three years ago?”

“Three years to the day,” Paul said.

“Really? You’ve got a good memory.”

“Kind of a hard thing to forget, sir.”

Curry nodded gravely. People had died under his commands as well. He understood.

The general turned to the Danish brass. “Gentlemen, this is Colonel Paul Fischer of the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID.” Curry pronounced the acronym you-sam-rid. “He’s from the special threats division, and where we go from here is his decision. Any questions?”

The way Curry said the words special threats and any questions made it clear he really didn’t want to hear any questions at all. The Danes just nodded.

Curry turned back to Paul. “I got a call from Murray Longworth. He said you’ve got the ball. I’m here to implement your orders, what ever they may be.”

“Thank you, General,” Paul said, although he wasn’t very thankful at all. If someone else could have been trusted to make these choices, he would have gladly passed the buck. “What are we dealing with?”

Curry simply pointed to the Quonset’s large main monitor.

Paul had somehow expected the images to be fuzzy. In those apocalypse movies, scenes of carnage came with ample amounts of static, flickering lights and sliding doors that randomly open and shut. For some reason, every doomsday vision seemed to be marked by substandard electrical work.

But this wasn’t Hollywood. The lighting was fine, the pictures perfectly clear.

The screen showed the high- angle view from a security camera. A lone man slowly crawled across a laboratory floor. He coughed over and over again, deep and wet, the kind that ties up your diaphragm for far too long, makes you wonder if you might not actually draw in another breath. Each ripping cough kicked out chunks of yellow-pink froth to join the wet bits that coated his chin and stained his white lab coat.

With each crawl, one arm weakly over the next, he let out a little noise, eeaungh. The bottom of the screen read DR. PONS MATAL.

“Oh, Pons,” Paul said. “Goddamit.”

“You knew the guy?”

“A little. I’ve read his research, was on panels with him at a few virology conferences. We had beers once. Brilliant man.”

“He’s going out hard,” Curry said, his jaw rigid and grinding a little as he watched the man. “What’s happening to him?”

Paul knew that answer all too well. He’d seen people die just this way, exactly three years ago. “Doctor Matal’s lungs are filling with mucus and pus, making them stiff. It’s hard for him to draw air. He’s drowning in his own fluids.”

“That’s how he’ll die? Drowning?”

“Could be. If the tissue erosion is bad enough, it can cut into the pulmonary artery. He’ll bleed out.”

“How do we know if that happens?”

“Believe me, you’ll know,” Paul said. “How many survivors?”

“There are none. Doctor Matal there is the last to go. Twenty-seven other staff members at the Novozyme facility. All bodies accounted for.”

Curry nodded to one of the soldiers manning the small consoles. The main monitor stayed on Matal’s futile crawl, while smaller screens flashed a series of still images. It took Paul a second to realize the images weren’t pictures — they were live video, but no one was moving.

Each image showed a prone body. Some had pinkish- yellow stains on their shirts, just like Matal. Others had blood on their mouths and clothes.

A few showed a more apparent cause of death — bullet wounds. Someone, probably Matal, had decided the flu strain was too deadly. That someone had stopped people from leaving the facility whether they showed symptoms or not.

The images made Paul’s stomach pinch — especially images of women. Pink froth covering their mouths, dead eyes staring out. They reminded him of the incident three years ago. Like Pons, Paul had been forced to make a call . . . and Clarissa Colding had died.

Paul took a breath and tried to force the thoughts away. He had a job to do. “General, when was the first confirmed infection?”

“Less than thirty-six hours ago,” Curry said, then checked his watch.“Based on Matal’s notes, he shot seven. Twenty died due to infection.

What ever this bug is, it moves fast.”

An understatement. Paul had never seen an infection move that quickly, kill that quickly. No one had.

“The facility’s contamination control readings are in the green,” Curry said. “Only two ways in, negatively pressurized airlocks and both fully functional. Air purification systems online and A-OK.”

Paul nodded. Negative pressure was key. If there were any breaks in the facility’s walls, doors or windows, fresh air would push in as opposed to contaminated air escaping out. “And you’re sure the entire staff is accounted for?”

Curry nodded. “Novozyme ran a tight ship. The administration helped us locate anyone who wasn’t in the building at the time of lockdown.

They’ve all been quarantined, and none show symptoms thus far. It’s contained.”

On the screen, Matal’s crawling slowed. His breaths came more rapidly, each accompanied by the ragged sound of flapping phlegm. Paul swallowed hard. “Did Doctor Matal make any disease- specific notes for us?”

Curry picked up a clipboard and passed it over. “Matal said it was a new Flu- A variant. Something from the pigs. Zeno zoo nose, I think it was.”

“Xenozoonosis,” Paul said, pronouncing the word slowly as zee- o-zoono-sis.

“That’s it,” Curry said. “Matal said it was worse than the Spanish flu of 1918.”

Paul quickly flipped through the notes. Matal hadn’t had time to properly type the virus, but he’d theorized it was an H5N1 variant or a mutation of H3N1. Paul scanned the lines, dreading what he’d see and wincing when he finally did — Matal’s staff had tried oseltamivir and zananivir, the two antivirals known to weaken swine flu. Neither had done a thing.

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