The Devil_s Workshop

DANGER BIO-CONTAINMENT AREA LEVEL 3

Once he was suited up, he entered the smaller lab. He moved across the room and looked into the two glass boxes that were positioned on the center island. From a distance they almost looked as if they contained swirling smoke, but once you got closer it became apparent that the boxes really contained hundreds of newly bred, swarming mosquitoes. Some were still on the floor of the boxes, sitting on a tray of blood jelly, feasting on his newly designed Pale Horse Prion, PHpr: the deadly rogue protein that he had injected into the blood gel.

He looked in at the young, freshly hatched females still poised on long spindly legs over the gel, sucking up the Prion with their needle-nosed tubular labrums.

There were only a few of them left on the bottom of the glass box. Most were now blooded with his gruesome cocktail, flying around, desperately looking for a warm body to attack. He picked up the phone in the windowless bio-containment room and dialed the number for the gas chamber. Dr. Charles Lack answered the phone. Before he spoke, Dexter DeMille took a deep breath.

"I guess I'm ready," he said.

Troy Lee was screaming obscenities as they dragged him up to the old gas chamber, located in the tower of Center Block.

The door to the chamber was opened and Troy Lee's T-shirt was ripped off, then he was thrown into the small enclosure. He hit the far wall hard and slid to the floor. "Whatta you doing? Okay, please…" he was pleading now. "I'm sorry… okay? I'm sorry."

Two M. P. S in white helmets, armbands, and jumpboots grabbed Sylvester, removed his shirt, and walked him into the chamber. Then the door was closed and bolted.

The air lock hissed.

Troy Lee was screaming again, but nobody in the tower area outside the chamber could hear him, because the gas chamber was constructed out of two heavy glass boxes, one air-locked inside the other.

Then Dexter DeMille stepped forward. Dr. Charles Lack was adjusting two tripods with cameras that were placed where they could videotape the procedure. Lack was a young, new addition to the staff at Fort Detrick, recently recruited from MIT. He and Dexter DeMille had been clashing over several important aspects of the Pale Horse Program. One area of intense disagreement was whether to use mosquitoes as the vector agent. Dr. Lack preferred the more primitive methods of ingesting the cocktail, by corrupting water supplies or foodstuffs. DeMille couldn't convince the cocky younger doctor that mosquitoes offered a much better delivery system. If the enemy found out the Pale Horse Prion had been placed in water or food, they could just stop consumption. In order to avoid mosquitoes they would need to put every soldier in Level Three bio-gear, almost impossible under attack time frames. Also, mosquitoes were territorial and didn't migrate to new areas. Most important, they had short life spans and died in about three days, clearing the area of dangerous infestation. Despite the logic of this, Dr. Lack continued to object, saying mosquitoes were cumbersome and hard to deliver, and could be swept to new areas by strong winds.

Dr. Lack finished his adjustments to the video equipment, then two M. P. S moved up and stood behind each camera. Dr. DeMille picked up the "Governor's phone" nearby.

"Can you see that okay, Admiral?" he said.

"Yes. Go ahead." Admiral James G. Zoll's rough voice came through the line from the communications room at Company A, First SATCOM Battalion Headquarters at Fort Detrick.

Now Troy Lee was on his feet, screaming silently at them through the soundproof glass. His too-white skin was turning red with the effort.

Dexter DeMille walked over to the two boxes affixed to brackets on the side of the gas chamber. He removed the canvas covers, revealing the newly hatched, swarming female mosquitoes.

Then he pulled up the air lock on each of the boxes, allowing the x-ray-sterilized and Prion-primed female mosquitoes to fly through a small one-way filter valve into the gas chamber. First one, then three, then fifty entered the enclosure. In a few moments, most of the deadly insects were in the gas chamber.

Quickly both Sylvester and Troy Lee had dozens of mosquitoes on them. They danced around in the gas chamber, trying to get them off, slapping at them with their hands, rubbing against the sides of the glass chamber, smearing specks of blood on the chamber walls.

Dexter waited until he was sure both Sylvester and Troy Lee had been thoroughly bitten, then he released an insect spray into the chamber. It flowed from newly installed valves in the ceiling, and quickly a fine toxic mist settled over Troy Lee and Sylvester, turning their shoulders wet and shiny.

One by one, the mosquitoes in the gas chamber died, falling off the two prisoners and off the walls where they clung. Hundreds landed dead in black clusters on the floor. Then one of the white-helmeted M. P. S turned on an overhead shower nozzle that drenched the chamber with water. The dead mosquitoes were washed from Troy Lee and Sylvester, rinsed off the glass walls and floor. Finally, they all disappeared down a drain, into a bio-container that was affixed under the scaffolding.

Dr. DeMille picked up the second intercom phone and dialed three digits. "Okay," he said softly.

The door opened downstairs and four M. P. S in full HEPA gear climbed the metal steps. The soldiers left their cameras, and everybody exited the tower for their own protection. The M. P. S in HEPA gear moved to the gas chamber door. They looked like visitors from the space program in their canvas suits and oxygen helmets.

They opened the air-locked door and dragged the confused prisoners out of the gas chamber.

Dexter DeMille went back to his quarters to begin what he assumed would be a three-to four-hour wait.

It began at 1156 A. M.

Suddenly, without warning, Troy Lee Williams got up off his bunk on the fifth tier and hurled himself at a passing guard, crashing headfirst against the steel bars of his prison cell, splitting his forehead open. The M. P. had passed too close to the cell, and Troy Lee managed to grab his hand, jerking it through the bars. In a homicidal rage, he clamped his mouth over the guard's hand, biting hard, snarling and tearing the soldier's flesh.

"Get the fuck off me!" the soldier screamed, as he snatched out his side arm and fired into the cell, hitting Troy Lee in the leg, throwing him back. Then the startled M. P. pulled his bleeding hand back through the bars and looked at the wound in horror. Troy Lee, with his own blood from the bullet flowing down his leg and the guard's blood running from his chin, stood in the center of the cell, screaming and drooling like a rabid animal.

Dr. DeMille ran up the stairs and onto the death row tier. Video cameras had also been set up in the cellblock, to record both Sylvester and Troy Lee. Dexter had been watching a monitor in his room and had seen the attack. Sylvester Swift was standing at his cell door, unchanged, but looking worried.

"Troy Lee, can you hear me?" Dexter asked the wild-looking murderer, who was in the center of his cell, blood and spit foaming at his mouth, his breath coming in gasps. "Tell me, tell me what you're feeling. What's it feel like? The rage you feel-is it uncontrollable?" He had a tape recorder out and pushed toward the bars.

Troy Lee's mind was somewhere else; he was homicidally insane. He charged Dexter DeMille and smashed against the metal bars, grabbing for Dexter's hand holding the tape recorder. Blood from the deep cuts on his forehead splattered out into the corridor. The microbiologist had been ready, and jumped back, avoiding the lunge.

"Get this soldier to sick bay," Dexter ordered.

They took the M. P. with the bleeding hand away. For almost twenty minutes more, Troy Lee raged in his cell.

It was worse than anything Dexter had ever seen among the Fore Aboriginal tribe in New Guinea in '73. They also had rages in the early stages of the disintegrating brain disease they called "Kuru," but it was nothing like this. He and Carleton Gajdusek had tried to save them, but one by one, the Aborigines first went mad, then died. It took the microbiologist a year of doing autopsies in grass huts to isolate and identify the likely cause as a rogue protein that was eating away the mood control center in their midbrains.

After he returned from New Guinea, Dexter had not been able to find funding to continue his Prion research. While he was teaching microbiology at Sam Houston University he was approached one evening by the head of the department and offered a research sabbatical at Fort Detrick, Maryland. It was there that he met the frightening Admiral Zoll, who surprised him with a thorough knowledge of his work in New Guinea. He was introduced to Zoll's bio-weapons program at the Devil's Workshop. There he began experimenting with mixing Kuru and mad cow disease, a similar protein-based illness that had recently surfaced in English cattle, making them crazy by also attacking the mood center in their brains.

The initial problem with his concoctions was that the total destruction of the midbrain took over two years-way too long for a bio-weapon. To accelerate the devastation, DeMille had finally mixed in a strain of human Epstein-Barr virus. E. B. virus proved a perfect accelerant. He continued to tinker and adjust, finding other ways to speed the result. His tests on primates were extensive, and finally he had a strain of Prion that ran its course in hours. He named his discovery the "Pale Horse Prion," PHpr, and it now had several unique characteristics that made it an excellent choice as a bio-weapon. One was stealth… the Prion appeared to be just another "normal" protein. It was undetectable by ordinary lab tests, and it was impervious to sterilization. PHpr was a "Dr. Jekyll" protein that transformed into a vicious "Mr. Hyde" Prion when activated.

He watched now in fascination as Troy Lee's hands clawed insanely at his own throat. His eyes were red-rimmed and resembled no eyes Dexter DeMille had ever seen.

Then, as with Kuru and mad cow, the rages started to subside and Troy Lee began to lose his balance, each time falling on his right side. During the next hour came the onset of tremors and dementia.

"The patient has gone into the severe ataxic stage," Dr. DeMille said into his tape recorder.

Twenty minutes later, Troy Lee was on his back, gurgling fluids out of his mouth as occasional grand-mal seizures ravaged his trembling body.

"It is four thirty-five," Dexter said softly into his tape recorder. "The subject now has badly impaired swallowing and has gone into status epilepticus."

At five-fifteen, Troy Lee Williams was pronounced dead. He was put into a bio-containment bag and removed to the hospital for autopsy.

The entire course of the disease, from infection to death, was less than six hours.

Despite over twenty mosquito bites, Sylvester Swift was unchanged. His good health proved that Dexter DeMille had done something that had never been achieved before… he had successfully targeted a bio-weapon to a specific genetic group by hitting Troy Lee and not affecting Sylvester at all.

Admiral Zoll called Dexter DeMille and congratulated him. "I'm very pleased," the sandpaper voice said. They both knew the weapon would devastate the enemy, first with the terrifying homicidal rages, then with the horrible death cycle.

"Thank you," Dexter replied.

Then the Admiral asked to speak to Dr. Lack. Dexter handed the phone reluctantly to his assistant, who asked softly, "What do we do with Sylvester Swift?"

"He has to be collateralized," Zoll replied.

Five minutes later a gunshot sounded in the empty corridor of the fifth tier of center block.

Dexter DeMille didn't hear it. He had already returned to his quarters.

He poured a strong drink of Scotch and sat on the edge of his bed. His hands shook, while his mind wandered. He had started studying Prions in New Guinea, trying to save lives, but after that there was almost no practical application. Nobody seemed to care about his discovery, except for Admiral Zoll. Somehow his once humanistic science had led him to Fort Detrick, and then to this gruesome new discovery.

"Dear God, what am I doing?" he finally whispered to himself. Then he got off his bunk, walked into his bathroom, and threw up.