Pandemic

40

THURSDAY, 2:29 P.M.

Although the guards continued to restrain Jack, Wei was immediately released. Jack eyed the man, unsure of how Wei intended to take advantage of the circumstance. But once again Jack was surprised. Wei was far less angry than Jack reasonably expected, as the first words out of his mouth were, shockingly enough, complimentary. “I admire people in good physical condition,” he said as he adjusted his V-neck, miracle-fabric workout shirt. It had become twisted around his torso. “Your physical fitness speaks well for your basketball playing and bike riding. Maybe I should look into both. You are certainly in far better shape than most Americans your age.” He then retied the drawstring of his sweatpants.

Jack tried to shake off the two sizable men restraining him, but they responded by tightening their grip. Wei noticed and told his guards to let him go. Once free, Jack immediately rearranged his own clothes and straightened his tie, which had somehow remained in place through the tussle. While Jack made himself more presentable, Wei and Kang-Dae had an extended and animated conversation in Mandarin.

“I hate to interrupt,” Jack said when it seemed Wei and Kang-Dae were going to talk interminably. Even some of the guards had begun to shift their weight out of apparent boredom. “As I said, this has been a delightful party, but all good things have to come to an end. I’ll be heading off, if you can give me a hint how I might get back to civilization.”

“That’s not going to happen right at the moment,” Wei said, interrupting his lengthy chat with Kang-Dae. “We are trying to decide what to do with you.”

“I imagine the OCME will soon be curious as to my whereabouts,” Jack said. “They’ll be calling the Dover Valley Hospital before too long, since I haven’t checked in like I was supposed to do.”

“I doubt that very much,” Wei scoffed. “It was one of the reasons we were intent on ferrying you out here after we heard you were put on leave. I think there is a good chance no one knows you are here.” He sighed. “All this is so unnecessary. You could have made this much easier than you have.”

“Sorry not to be more cooperative,” Jack said mockingly, but under his bravado he felt a chill, as it was dawning on him that Wei had told him too much. It was true that no one, not even Warren, knew where he was, and his only connection at that point with the normal, sane world was his mobile phone in his pocket.

Wei shook his head in ostensible disappointment. “Your dossier specifically talked about your well-known aversion to bureaucratic incompetence and restrictive, inappropriate rules. I counted on it. In contrast to some others in our organization who thought of you as an existential risk, I thought otherwise. I believed you would relish the opportunity to push back against bureaucratic interference by helping us solve the problem of the shortage of organs for transplant. Thanks to CRISPR/CAS9, it is one of the first win-win opportunities in medicine today. But you have proved me wrong, Dr. Stapleton. So that’s it! I’m done here.”

Wei turned to the guards and, switching to Mandarin, barked out instructions to them that included drawing their attention to Jack’s jacket draped over the back of one of the director’s chairs.

“Wait,” Jack yelled, as he realized what was happening. “Where am I going?”

“That is a problem,” Wei said. “It is something we never thought about in planning our complex. The idea of needing a place for incarceration never occurred to us. We are going to have to improvise. I’ve instructed our guards to take you to the Farm Institute. We have some holding pens with which we’ll have to make do. It will give you a chance to mull over all that we have talked about. Good day, Dr. Stapleton.” With that said, Wei picked up his towel and headed in the direction of the indoor swimming pool.

Jack called after him, trying to suggest that they talk more, but Wei merely waved over his shoulder as the door closed behind him.

“Okay, Dr. Stapleton,” one of the guards said with a heavy Chinese accent. He and his compatriots were dressed slightly differently from the guards who had brought Jack out to Wei’s house. Although their uniforms were the same color, they were more elegant and made with a more refined fabric suitable for wear in a domestic rather than commercial environment. “Dr. Zhao asks that you hand over your mobile phone.”

“I’m not in favor of that idea,” Jack said with manufactured swagger. He was dismayed at the request coming out of the blue.

“I’m sorry, but Dr. Zhao was insistent,” the man said. He had a name tag, but it was in Chinese characters.

“Sorry,” Jack said. “I’ve been told by my parents never to give my phone to strangers.”

In response to this feeble attempt at humor, the guard barked an order and two of the other guards immediately seized Jack for the second time, one holding each arm. The guard who had spoken with Jack then unceremoniously patted Jack’s pants pockets until he located the phone. He then reached in and extracted it. A moment later it was in the guard’s pocket.

He then motioned with his hand, and Jack was released. “Now we are going out to the vehicle,” the man said. He tossed Jack his jacket. “We will go through the gym and exit directly outside. It is a short walk through the garden. Dr. Zhao suggested we not restrain you, but we will if you make it necessary.”

“I get the picture,” Jack said. He pulled on his jacket. He wasn’t excited about returning to the Dover Valley Hospital with his hands cuffed behind his back. Besides, he liked the idea of an unencumbered walk through the garden. With his basketball playing and bike riding, he was confident he could outrun a good portion of the population. He also liked the idea that Wei’s home was nestled along the border of the Picatinny Arsenal, which Ted Markham said was surrounded by an extensive virgin forest. What better place to lose himself, he thought. He wouldn’t even mind getting picked up by the arsenal security, which he imagined would have to be a robust force, as large as the place purportedly was.

They traversed the gym in short order and exited outside. Although it was into the second week of November, the grounds were ablaze with fall flowers. There was also a Chinese gardener toiling in the flowerbeds, wearing what looked to Jack like a pair of blue pajamas. On his head was a flat conical hat Jack always associated with the Asian farmers and rice fields.

As they walked, Jack wondered if the property had a high chain-link fence around its periphery similar to what surrounded GeneRx and the Farm Institute. If it did, it could be a problem. Still, he thought it worth the gamble. He had no idea what to expect at the Farm Institute. The idea of being put in a pen as if he were livestock wasn’t appealing in the slightest.

The break that Jack was looking for came as they exited the formal garden. Just beyond the flowerbeds was a short expanse of lawn bordered by woods on one side and driveway on the other. Jack’s idea wasn’t elaborate. He thought he had a good chance of outrunning these uniformed men handicapped by all their equipment festooned on their belts plus heavy-soled shoes. Jack, as usual, had on his black cross-trainers. He also had already pulled on his jacket and zipped it up.

Without warning, Jack bolted. He thought he’d made a clean getaway, as no one even tried to grab him. In the next second, he expected to plunge into the edge of the forest, but he never made it. Stunned in both senses of the word, physically and mentally, he was stopped in his tracks as his whole body seized up. It wasn’t pain as much as shock — again, in both senses of the word. The very next moment he was on the moist ground, trying to recover his senses. He’d been Tased.

The guards gathered around. Two of them roughly hauled Jack to his feet. The one who had spoken earlier pulled Jack’s limp arms behind his back and handcuffed them. When he was finished, the group half- carried Jack to their van. Jack was put in the backseat between two guards and the sliding door was closed.

By the time they passed through the security gate in Wei’s winding driveway, Jack was back to normal, although again uncomfortable sitting against his cuffed hands. As they pulled out onto the county road, Jack tried to make conversation. “Sorry about that attempt to run away,” he said, giving apology a try. “I didn’t mean any disrespect to you fellows.”

He got no response from anyone. The man who had done the talking was sitting in the front passenger seat. Besides the two men next to Jack, there was a fifth man in the third-row seat. It seemed unnatural that all these men were so silent. It was just the same as when Jack had been driven from the hospital to Wei Zhao’s house with the GeneRx security people. Jack found it extraordinary. Verbal communication was as natural to Jack as breathing.

“You people seem preternaturally quiet,” Jack said. “Is it me or are you always so silent?” There was no response.

Eventually even Jack gave up, and he, too, rode in silence until they turned into the entrance of Dr. Wei Zhao’s commercial complex. As they were passing the turnoff to the hospital, Jack said, “I’d much rather go to Dover Valley, if you don’t mind.” As he expected, they ignored him.

A few minutes later they stopped at the gatehouse leading within the compound to GeneRx and the Farm Institute. As soon as the driver lowered the window, Jack shouted out that he was not a willing visitor and was being brought in against his will. “Help! Please call the local police,” he yelled.

The people in the gatehouse ignored him, as did the other occupants of the vehicle. It was apparent everyone knew one another by sight. After the driver was given several keys, the van pulled ahead and the driver raised his window. Jack looked longingly at the GeneRx building as they passed. He felt he wanted to go anywhere but the Farm Institute. He was absolutely certain he didn’t want to be put into an animal pen.

To Jack’s surprise, the van did not stop at the Farm Institute’s administration entrance, where Jack had entered on his brief tour the day before. Instead, they drove all the way along the front of the building and then rounded its end. Then they drove the length of one of the wings that stuck off the back and couldn’t be seen from the front. Jack could now appreciate that there were three wings in total, such that the Farm Institute’s footprint was a letter E.

The SUV came to a halt at the end of the wing where several semi-trailers were parked off to the side. As the guards climbed out of the front of the van, Jack tried to figure out what part of the institute they had stopped at, but there was no signage whatsoever. There was a normal entrance door, as well as a receiving dock with a large overhead door. The only windows in that portion of the two-story wing were up high under the eaves.

The sliding door of the van opened, and Jack was helped out. “How about removing my handcuffs?” he suggested, once he was standing on the macadam of the driveway.

“When we have you in the pen, we will remove them,” the guard said. The entire group walked to the door, where the driver used the key given to him at the gatehouse. Inside was a dark, windowless office. Everyone filed in after the light was turned on.

“Keep going,” the guard said, as he pointed toward another door in the back of the room behind the desks.

The second room was cavernous and had a mildly disagreeable smell. It was filled with a significant amount of assembly-line-like machinery, with an overhead conveyor system whose function Jack did not immediately recognize. Although some natural light spilled in from the windows high on the walls, it wasn’t enough to provide much ambient light down on the floor, and the machinery cast weird and grotesque shadows.

“This way,” the guard said, pointing off toward the left in the direction of the main part of the institute. Jack followed several of the other guards who had gone ahead. After walking several hundred feet, they came upon a huge, heavy wire-mesh enclosure that extended off into the distance. A moment later they approached an embedded door made of the same material. Inside the cage, the floor was covered with what appeared to be sawdust.

“What is this building for?” Jack asked, unsure if he’d get an answer.

“It’s the slaughterhouse,” the guard said.

“Oh, wonderful,” Jack said sarcastically. He’d been told about the slaughterhouse by Ted Markham and Stephen Friedlander back when they were acting as if they were trying to impress him. Now he was getting to see it much more intimately than he would have liked. It occurred to him that the hulking machinery they’d been passing was for processing and butchering animals.

The van driver used another key to open the mesh door. The hinges made an agonized creaking sound, as if they hadn’t been opened in years.

“Turn around,” the guard said.

As Jack turned around he noticed the man with the Taser had unsheathed his weapon, just in case. Jack had no intention of getting Tased a second time.

“Okay, inside!” the guard said after removing the cuffs and pointing into the interior of the huge coop.

Jack glanced through the door. The cage was about ten feet wide and ten feet high. To the right, it terminated after thirty feet or so, while to the left, it disappeared off into hazy darkness. It was hardly inviting, and as the understatement of the year, he was not inclined to go inside. “What is this cage for?” he asked, in an attempt to stall, even though he had a pretty good idea it was to hold animals before the slaughter.

“Inside,” the guard said, giving him a shove to the small of the back.

Jack had to step up and duck down at the same time to enter. Behind him, he heard the hinges complain again prior to a loud mechanical click as the door shut and locked. Jack turned around. The guards were already leaving.

“Hey!” Jack called. “How long am I going to be here?” But the men didn’t answer. They didn’t even turn around. Eventually he heard the door to the office close. Then there was a heavy stillness.

Turning back around, Jack looked first to the right. Only ten to fifteen feet away he could see that the cage narrowed such that animals being herded in that direction would be forced into single file to facilitate them being killed and then hoisted up onto the conveyor system to be hacked into various cuts of meat. Turning again, he looked in the opposite direction. That way, the cage progressively widened before vanishing into a murky nothingness.