Extinction Horizon

-11-

It was going on midnight, and Kate couldn’t calm down. She paced nervously across the lab, chewing on the inside of her bottom lip as she waited for the bioinformatics software to look for a match and for Javier to call.

The program had compared the sequence results with all genomes in both the NCBI and CDC database. In minutes she would know if they had found a match.

Kate flinched from the vibration of her cell phone. She dug it from her pocket and saw the call she’d been waiting for. Her heart thumped as she swiped the screen.

“Javier? Are you okay?”

His reply came in several mumbled words. His throat gurgled and a guttural cough erupted over the line.

Her heart kicked harder.

“Kate…”

“Yes, I’m here. Are you okay?”

More coughs crackled in her ear. She closed her eyes, wincing at each sound. She knew what they meant.

“They’re everywhere,” he choked. “I feel them. Like a swarm of fire ants burrowing behind my eyes. And I’m so hungry, Kate. So hungry.”

Kate brought her right hand to her face, cupping her mouth in shock. “Javier, you need to get to a hospital.”

He screamed in agony.

“Javier, my God. Javier, you have to get to a hospital,” she said, knowing it was already too late. Without treatment, and with Chicago in chaos, she knew he wouldn’t last long.

“I have never felt so much hunger,” he said in a moment of clarity. “I love you, sis. And I know if anyone can stop this virus it’s—” He wailed again, his words twisting into a snarl.

Kate whimpered, her hand falling from her lips. “Listen to me, Javier!” she uttered. “You have to find a hospital. Demand that they sedate you. Demand that…” Kate paused. She knew better than anyone that not even antiviral medicines worked on Ebola.

Tears welled around her eyes.

“I love you, Javier,” she cried.

His response came in another scream that she could hardly make out. “Ahhhhhhh… love you… Stop it! Make it stop!”

Kate’s stomach sank, a wave of nausea overwhelming her. She could picture her brother’s face. Bloody tears streaking down his olive skin, moving into his dimples and then through the brown goatee on his chin. She could see the blood vessels around his bright blue eyes rupturing. Javier was transforming on the other end of the line, and all she could do was listen.

“Kate!” he yelled.

And then she heard nothing. The line went dark.

“No! Javier,” she said frantically. “Javier!”

Kate collapsed to her knees and tossed the phone across the room. It landed in the corner with a metallic crunch.

Bursting into tears, she struggled for air. Her chest felt tight, her heart rate elevating rapidly. The nausea intensified. Before she could react, she lurched forward and threw up her breakfast. The acidic taste made her gag. She swiped the remnants off her mouth and tucked her chin against her chest, breathing deeply.

The sound of the lab doors opening startled her. Michael was frozen in the doorway.

“Kate?” he said slowly.

Forcing herself to her feet she wiped her mouth again. “He’s infected.”

“Who?”

Kate’s voice softened. “Javier.”

Michael extended his arms and embraced her in an abrupt hug, his arms massaging her back. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Kate.”

A chirp from the decoder rang out behind them. With tears filling her eyes, she leaned down to see the test was complete. Two words blinked across the screen.

No Match.

Beckham stood under the shadow of a Blackhawk, watching another transport wing soar across the skyline. Normally, watching the American military stretch its muscles would give him great satisfaction. But he felt betrayed.

Used.

He’d do his duty. Sure. He always did. That didn’t mean he had to like it. He couldn’t stop thinking about all of the soldiers and innocent civilians who would die before this was over. Over the past forty-eight hours, Chicago had been reduced to a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The city was teeming with the sick, and those that weren’t already dead were killing one another. The perimeter the National Guard had set up around the city had quickly fallen.

The virus was spreading.

But the military was ready. The sounds and sights all around him told him they were prepared. Beckham watched a platoon of Army infantrymen jog across the tarmac. They made their way to a C-130, a staff sergeant he didn’t recognize barking orders at them.

“All right, Third Platoon. Check your sensitive items when we get on board. Everyone check your buddy. And Val, tighten that damn chin strap.”

The sight didn’t exactly restore Beckham’s faith in the military, but it reminded him that he had his own men to look after. That was still his number one priority.

Throwing his pack over his shoulders, Beckham looked for his team. Riley stood a few feet away, watching in silence, his light blue eyes following the soldiers into the belly of the transport plane. The sandy brown hair sticking out of his helmet blew in the slight breeze. He scratched his cleanly shaved face as he watched. Behind that intense stare, Riley was just a kid at heart and in spirit. The team’s little brother.

He patted Riley on the shoulder, and the younger operator looked up at him quizzically.

“You okay, Boss?”

“Yeah. Just glad you’re here, Riley.”

The kid nodded, a far cry from his typical smile and laugh. He scrutinized Beckham with the same intense stare from earlier. “You sure you’re okay?”

Beckham forced a half smile. “I’m good. How about you, kid? How are you holding up?”

Riley’s eyes darted to the ground. It was a look Beckham had seen a hundred times before—it was the look of a man that had taken a life and was still coming to terms with it. Taking another life almost always took time to dig in. Once it did, it settled in your gut, twisting and prodding like a knife that you couldn’t bat away. Only in this case Riley hadn’t taken just any life—he’d taken the life of a friend.

“You did what you had to do,” Beckham said. “You hear me, kid?”

Riley swiped his nose with a sleeve. “Yeah, I hear you. That wasn’t Tenor back there,” he said, his tone low, like he was trying to convince himself.

Beckham shook his head. “No, it wasn’t.”

Horn’s loud voice boomed from inside the Blackhawk. He crouched in the open door and smacked the metal side with a paw. “That reminds me, I never said thanks for saving my ass.”

Riley nodded. “You’d have done the same thing.” He threw a duffel bag inside the chopper. “I still can’t believe we pulled evac duty. Since when the hell did we become escorts?”

“We’re whatever Command tells us we are,” Beckham replied. “And it sounds like Ellis has an important team waiting for him in Atlanta. What’s the status of your family, Big Horn?”

The operator jumped out of the chopper. “Brought them to base, just like you said. They’ll be safer here.”

“Good,” Beckham replied.

Across the tarmac, the engines on the C-130 hummed to life and all three men watched the plane lurch down the runway. Beckham shielded his eyes from the bright morning sun.

The sound of footsteps replaced the diminishing roar from the plane.

“Master Sergeant Beckham!” came an energetic voice. He didn’t need to turn to see Ellis jogging across the tarmac.

“About time,” Beckham said, grabbing the doctor’s single bag.

“We almost left without you,” Horn said.

Ellis paused at the doorway and watched the three operators chuckle. In a very serious tone he said, “You don’t know, do you?”

Beckham tossed the doctor’s bag on the floor of the bird and gave Ellis a quick once over.

“Know what?” Horn said. He pulled his skull mask from around his neck and tucked it into his shirt.

“The outbreak has hit Atlanta,” Ellis said quickly.

“What? How?” Riley blurted.

Beckham reached for the handle to the MP5 strung over his shoulder. The grip of the metal felt reassuring. “How did it get to Atlanta so fast? Can those things fucking drive?”

Ellis ran a nervous hand through his hair. He took off his glasses and put them in his breast pocket very methodically and then, shaking his head, said, “I don’t know, by plane possibly.”

“How the hell did one of those things get on a plane?” Riley asked.

“The incubation period seems to be fluid,” Ellis said. “That’s how it got to Chicago in the first place. But honestly, I’m not sure how it’s spreading so fast. None of this makes any sense.”

“Sure it does,” Beckham replied. He paused, waiting for the rumble from three Ospreys taking off further down the tarmac to pass. Beckham loosened his grip on his weapon. “You’re a scientist, right? Don’t you see?”

Ellis narrowed his eyebrows. “See what?”

“Dr. Medford created the perfect virus. It doesn’t kill its host, and it spreads like fire in a dry forest,” Beckham said.

“I suppose you’re right,” Ellis said. “Which means we need to find a treatment ASAP.”

Horn tapped the end of his M27 on the metal door of the chopper. “You want a treatment? Well, here’s a cure,” he said, lifting the machine gun.

Ellis’ face remained stone cold. “I’m afraid you won’t have enough bullets.”

Grunting, Horn climbed into the aircraft and tossed his gear on the floor. “We’ll see about that.”

Beckham gestured at the Blackhawk with his chin. “After you, doctor.”

The first pass from the chopper’s blades whooshed above them and Beckham peered over his shoulder one more time before climbing inside the Blackhawk. Across the airfield, aircraft of all shapes and sizes waited for air traffic control to give them the green light for takeoff. Platoons and squads marched and jogged around the tarmac, filing into formations and boarding aircraft.

Fort Bragg reminded him of a Forward Operating Base. In a way, he supposed the post had transformed into one, only this time they weren’t being deployed to some godforsaken sand castle. This time, the enemy was on home turf. Beckham spit the bad taste out of his mouth as another plane took off. He paused to scan the organized chaos around them. The choke of diesel engines and the footfalls of heavy boots owned the morning. The entire post was alive with movement, preparing for a new type of war.

Kate stood hunched over a sink, her tears falling freely now. She’d retreated to the lab’s bathroom to pull herself together.

She jerked involuntarily when she thought of Javier. She closed her swollen eyes and pictured the transformation his body was going through. It wasn’t hard to imagine, considering what she’d seen in the video of patient zero and what she’d heard in the conference call with Deputy Director Frank hours earlier.

Her brother would be past Phase 1 now. The alterations to his physiology would be graphic: swollen lips, receding gums, vertical pupils, hemorrhaging from every orifice. His extremities would twist and snap, his hands curling and morphing into claws.

The man Kate pictured in her mind wasn’t her brother any longer. The man she pictured was a monster.

She didn’t bother brushing the tears away. Like Javier, she had completely lost control of her body. Instead of hemorrhaging blood she was hemorrhaging tears.

A double rap on the door.

Kate flinched.

“Kate, are you in there?”

It was Michael.

There was a second round of knocks.

Kate took in a deep breath and turned on the water. She didn’t want to look at the image in the mirror, but she had to. She needed to see how awful she looked.

It was bad. Dark bags rimmed her swollen eyes. She was pale, and her hair was frizzled. After splashing cold water on her face she pulled her hair back into a ponytail.

“Kate,” Michael pleaded. “I need your help. We need to get everything downloaded and the data prepped for the evacuation. There isn’t anything you can do for Javier now.”

She opened the door and stepped into the hallway with glazed, unfocused eyes. She saw Michael standing in front of her, but didn’t make a move to acknowledge him.

“Kate!” Michael said. He snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Think of your parents. Your friends. They are still out there.”

“I thought you said we couldn’t stop this,” Kate blurted without thinking.

Michael softened. “I did.”

Wiping away the last of her tears, she peered into her mentor’s eyes. He reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder and in a soothing clinical voice said, “We have to try. This is our job. Millions if not billions of people are counting on our work.”

Billions.

Kate was used to working on viruses that threatened the lives of thousands. But billions? A billion lives in her hands?

She took in a measured breath and pushed thoughts of her brother from her mind. Michael was right. The world was counting on scientists. The world was counting on their work. She had to help the living now. Her work was all that mattered. She had to stop the spread before it crossed any more borders—before it reached Europe, where her parents were.

They hurried back to the lab, talking as they walked. “Things are bad up top, Kate. Internet and cell phone traffic is probably stretched to the limit.”

“Only going to get worse,” Kate replied.

Inside the lab, Michael rushed to his computer. “We got the PCR protocol test back. What do you make of this?”

Kate sucked in one final deep breath and pulled up a stool. After they’d failed to find a match in the CDC and NCBI databases, they’d run a PCR test. It was the final step to trying to match up the genomes they’d already sequenced.

“Okay,” she said, pulling in a deep breath and focusing on the information in front of her. “What do we have?”

“As you know, the results showed no direct match. However, there are remarkable similarities to Ebola.” Michael typed on the keyboard to load the results. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said as data scrolled across the screen.

Kate narrowed her focus. Six of the seven genes were the same known genes of Ebola. She recognized the first three. They were used to control transcription, replication, and packaging into the new virions. But the fourth of the seven genes was different.

She pointed at the screen, knowing from memory what gene it was. “Glycoprotein on the virus shell has mutated.”

Michael brought a finger to his lip. “So that explains why the hemorrhaging isn’t killing the victims like it normally would.”

Kate nodded as she digested the information. She spoke out loud as she considered the results. “Glycoprotein enables the Ebola virus to attach to white blood cells and spread throughout the body. The protein targets endothelial cells, which line the blood vessels. Normally that causes a chain of events that make the cells separate from the blood vessel walls.”

“And it leaves a massively unstable vascular wall, permeable to blood. That’s what causes the hemorrhaging,” Michael added.

“Precisely.”

“So if the glycoprotein spike has been altered, then maybe it only links to macrophages and isn’t disrupting the endothelial cell attachment to the vascular walls as normal.”

Kate nodded. “So there will be some hemorrhaging, but just enough to continue the spread of the virus, not enough to kill the host.”

“Jesus,” Michael replied.

There was a brief pause as the two scientists reflected on the implications.

Kate spoke first. “Obviously we’re dealing with a new or modified strain here.” She studied the bank of lights above, squinting as she thought. “Doctor Medford must have found a way to alter the fourth gene. It’s a partial cure.” She paused to think. “Shit,” she mumbled. “This still doesn’t make sense.”

“Let’s start with what we know,” Michael added. His voice had returned to the clinical tone that reminded her of his expertise.

“Okay,” Kate replied, trying to think of a way to keep the explanation simple. “The sample from Guinea expresses a glycoprotein with a strong affinity for proteins found on the surface of the endothelial cells. The sample from Chicago does not.”

Michael nodded. “But how? And what’s causing the other changes to the victims? The changes to their physiology make no sense. This new modified strain is turning victims into monsters.”

Kate looked at the floor. Her brother was one of those monsters now.

“I’m sorry, Kate,” Michael said, realizing his mistake.

She blinked the images away and with urgency said, “We need to put a sample of the virus in a cell culture dish of endothelial cells and see what happens. Let’s suit up.”

She’d gone to grab her bag when she heard the loud wailing. Her eyes shot up to the emergency bank of lights in the corner of the room. The red lights swirled around the glass dome.

“What the hell?” Michael said.

The sound intensified, the whine of the alarm silencing out Kate’s labored breathing. Her heart climbed in her throat. She rushed to her laptop just as the door to the office swung open and a research assistant burst into the room. He hunched over, his hands on his knees, panting.

“It’s here,” he said in between labored breaths.

“What?” Michael asked. “What’s here?”

“The infection!” the young man coughed.

“What do you mean it’s here?” Kate asked.

Sucking in a breath, the assistant rushed over to the television in the corner of the room. Kate had silenced it earlier. She grabbed the TV remote and clicked the volume to max. The whine of the emergency siren echoed in the room, making it impossible to hear, but she could see something was happening.

A newscaster stood on the top of a building she didn’t recognize. The cameraman angled the video camera over the side of the roof. Below, a mob of people ran down the side of both streets. They streamed out of office buildings, tripping over one another and clogging the sidewalks. Cars blared their horns in the bottlenecked traffic. One of the drivers pulled his SUV onto the curb, sending a man flying through the adjacent Starbucks’ front window.

“Where is this?” Kate asked.

“Atlanta,” the assistant said, finally catching his breath. “The virus is in Atlanta. A passenger on a plane brought the infection in overnight. Atlanta, New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco. There are reports in virtually every major city,” he said.

“Prep the data,” Michael said, “and get ready to go. We’re leaving.”