Pestilence

26

In the middle of the night, Samantha stretched and decided she needed some caffeine if she was going to stay up, giving doses of the vaccine. Since the vaccine hadn’t gone through the proper clinical studies, she was uncomfortable injecting it into human subjects. But she’d thought about it on the drive out of the medical center to downtown and couldn’t think of another option. If the vaccine worked, it would prevent an enormous amount of suffering. But if it didn’t, if Duncan was right and the virus was strong enough to replicate in a weakened state, everyone vaccinated would be infected.

She sat in the passenger seat this time, and Duncan was in the backseat. She glanced over at him, and his head was leaned against the seat. He was sleeping, even though the jeep bounced around as if they were on an unpaved African road rather than a highway in Los Angeles.

Duncan was a decent man, and she knew he cared for her deeply. They had some points of contention, particularly religion. She saw it as an unnecessary extravagance. Why put in all that time and effort worshiping ghosts that likely didn’t exist? Atheism was as illogical to her because it was a belief system built around a negative of something that was non-verifiable. She had gone to a meeting at a local atheist organization, but she’d found it just as formulaic as the religious services she’d been to.

Duncan, with both a medical degree and a PhD in microbiology, was quite likely the most brilliant man she had ever known. She was puzzled that this brilliant man could believe in things without evidence and apply the scientific method all day at work, then abandon it when it came to his own fundamental beliefs.

Her father had been the same. He’d been a devout Catholic his entire life and read History of the Saints and the New Testament to her as bedtime stories when she was three years old. She particularly enjoyed History of the Saints, the stories of men and women of conviction who were ready to die in the most gruesome ways for their faith. She could think of few things-in fact nothing-that inspired as much passion as faith. The whole thing was an enigma to her. Religious thinking seemed to be declining in the Western world, with only five percent of Europeans attending church and the number of regular attendees declining in the United States. Societies had been religious for so long-for the entire existence of mankind, in fact-that she couldn’t decide how the complete abandonment of religion would impact society. She could think of only two possibilities: enlightenment or anarchy.

“It’s right up here, Dr. Bower,” the driver said.

The jeep came to a stop, and she stepped out as the rough halt roused Duncan. A metal trailer, much like the one Dr. Olsen had occupied with his equipment and surgical room, was set up for them. As they stepped inside, the driver got out boxes of pre-wrapped syringes filled with the vaccine. He placed them down near some chairs and glanced at both of them. “Good luck.”

When they were alone, Duncan sat down. He seemed tired and uncertain of what they should be doing.

“I don’t think this is going to work,” he said.

“I know.”

“So if it doesn’t, we’re injecting these people with replicating poxvirus.”

“I know,” she said softly.

He exhaled. “What a mess. I can’t believe it’s come to this. We have to potentially kill several hundred people to see if we can save several billion.” He leaned back in the chair. “I read an account once from a historian that was alive during the Plague of Justinian in Constantinople. He said the levies holding back flooding waters broke because the people that maintained them had grown sick. And when they broke, the city was flooded. Sitting by his window, he watched the bodies float down his street. He said the city was choked with corpses to the point that people felt like they couldn’t breathe…”

“And it faded away, Duncan. At some point, this will fade away, too.”

“In the meantime, before the plague faded away, it changed the course of history and killed five thousand people a day. And this pathogen is more contagious. I’m no big-government nut, by any means, but I’m not sure I’m against all this.” He waved his hand around the trailer. “We’re not talking a few thousand or even a hundred thousand deaths, Sam. We’re talking about the end of civilization.”

“And so because of that risk, we throw out our values, our beliefs? We toss them to try and have a little more safety? It’s not worth it. I’d rather die out than live in Stalinist Russia. That type of life isn’t life at all.”

He rubbed his temples. “Maybe any life is better than no life.”

Before she could respond, a middle-aged blond woman in a purple shirt appeared at the door.

“I was brought here for the vaccine,” she said. “I was told to get it here.”

Sam glanced at Duncan, then told the woman, “Come in and roll up your sleeve, please.”