Pandemic Page 58

Murray wasn’t a naval expert, but Porter seemed confident in the measures taken.

Blackmon eased back in her chair. “So, sabotage,” she said. “That’s the most likely answer. But if something did get through our lines …”

She didn’t finish the thought. She didn’t need to.

“Every agency is on alert,” Porter said. “Homeland, TSA, everyone. Not that this changes anything — they’ve been on alert since the Los Angeles went down.”

Murray had his doubts. Anyone talented enough, resourceful enough, to s.n.a.t.c.h an artifact from nine hundred feet down — right out from under the nose of the U.S. Navy — would have no problem getting past airport security, or just putting the thing on a truck and sending it to Mexico.

At any point on any path of transport, infection could occur.

“Well,” Blackmon said, “for once, I find myself rooting for sabotage.”

Murray couldn’t agree more.

WELCOME ABOARD

Ten clear cells. Four empty. Six occupied.

Three new subjects. Margaret tried to think about them in those terms, as subjects. But unless Tim’s cellulase-secreting yeast acted like some kind of miracle cure, those men were death-row inmates.

She stood in the airlock that led from the lab s.p.a.ce to the containment area. She looked through the door’s window, stared at the men in the cells. Clarence stood on her right, Tim on her left. They quietly waited for her to think things through.

Thirty hours since she and Clarence had landed on the Carl Brashear. Barely more than a day, and things were already collapsing.

The men in the clear cells weren’t alone — two positives had been found on the Pinckney, the infected men discovered because they opened fire on their shipmates, killing three and wounding two. Unlike the Brashear, however, the Pinckney had no containment facility: Captain Tubberville had ordered the immediate execution of the infected men and the incineration of their bodies.

Obviously, Petrovsky and Walker hadn’t been the only ones to come up from the Los Angeles. Others, or at least pieces of others, had floated to the surface, contagious flesh mingling with swimming survivors of the Forrest Sherman and the Stratton. Or could it have been something else? Maybe a gas-filled puffball corpse breaking the surface and then opening up to spill spores across the task force?

The cause almost didn’t matter: what mattered was that the task force had become infected. This was going to end in a giant fireball. The only real question was, would anyone get out alive?

“The killer, Orin Nagy, the test missed him,” Margaret said. “I didn’t think false-negatives were possible.”

“They’re not,” Tim said. “He must have found a way to skip his test, or use someone else’s blood.”

Margaret turned to Clarence. “Yasaka has strict procedures in place. How could someone dodge a test?”

“I don’t know the specifics,” he said, “but there’s hundreds of extra men on this ship. It’s very confused up top, no matter how disciplined Yasaka’s crew is. If someone smart tried hard enough, they could probably duck a test. Maybe even two.”

That didn’t make the cellulose test worthless, exactly, but not far from it.

“Maybe more are ducking it,” Margaret said. “There’s got to be another way to look at the task force’s population as a whole, try to get an idea of just how f.u.c.ked we are.”

Tim raised a gloved hand. “I can get Yasaka to give me access to onboard medical records. I’ll set up a biosurveillance algorithm. Maybe there’s common symptoms reported early, before the infection reaches the stage where it’s detectable and then contagious. If there’s a spike in a certain symptom — say, headaches — we might get an idea of how many people are infected but not yet testable.”

Biosurveillance … she hadn’t thought of that. Maybe Tim’s background in bioinformatics could make a difference.

“Do it,” Margaret said. “But make sure your yeast cultures are the first priority. What’s the status of those?”

“Modified yeast is growing like wildfire,” Tim said. “Population-wise, we’re succeeding, but it remains to be seen if it has any impact.”

Tim didn’t sound jovial anymore. The light had faded from his eyes. He, too, was good at math, and math said he was standing in what would wind up being his tomb.

“We need to split your cultures,” Margaret said. “As soon as we’re finished here, give half to Clarence so he can ship it to Black Manitou.”

Tim didn’t answer right away. Margaret knew he could read between the lines, knew she was confirming his fears that they were all doomed.

“Sure,” he said. “I guess that makes sense.”

Clarence cleared his throat. “I a.s.sume sooner is better than later?”

“Yesterday was already a week too late,” Margaret said. “Get ahold of Murray, make it happen. Right now, Tim’s cultures are the most valuable thing on the planet.”

“Will do,” Clarence said. “What about those new crawlers you injected into Edmund? The hydras. Do we need to get those to Black Manitou as well?”

Margaret looked into the containment area again, toward the cell that held Edmund.

“We’ll find out soon,” she said. “I’m going to take samples from him right now, see if the hydras replicated.”

Aside from Tim’s yeast, the hydras were the only other real hope. The yeast would live in the intestine, secreting cellulase into the bloodstream, cellulase that would, hopefully, melt any infection. But Tim’s yeast wouldn’t survive in there indefinitely: normal gut flora would outcompete it, the very nature of the gut itself would kill it, and so on. To maintain effectiveness as an inoculant, people would have to ingest regular doses of the stuff.