Victor Methos - Plague

“No, you didn’t. You just made a judgment without any evidence. Hardly seems fitting a scientist, doesn’t it?”

Sam noticed that Duncan was full-on blushing. She considered Benjamin Cornell. He appeared wiry and was shifting his weight from foot to foot. He was clearly anxious about something and it made her worry. But there was also kindness in his eyes. She could see it sparkling through the passion he had for his cause.

“I have no quarrel with you two,” Benjamin said. “You both do good work. But you work for monsters. Still, we all have to work for somebody I guess, so I don’t blame you for it. But I think what you’re doing here is wrong. It’s just plain wrong, even evil. I don’t know how you, Dr. Adams, can sleep at night doing what you’re doing.”

“What exactly do you think I’m doing?”

“Government evasion is cowardly, Doctor. Let’s at least be honest with each other, even in the lies.”

“Ben, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Benjamin stared at him quizzically a moment and then recognition dawned on him and his face lit up as a grin came over his lips. “They haven’t told you, have they?” he said in almost a whisper.

“Told us what?”

“You’re leaving the island.”

“We knew that.”

“No, not just you. Everyone. The military, the CDC, everyone. This island will be quarantined and the people on it will not be allowed to leave. They didn’t tell you that?”

Sam and Duncan looked to each other and Sam said, “He’s lying.”

“Call Ralph and ask yourself if you don’t believe me. They’re pulling everybody out and cutting the supplies. These people are supposed to survive on their own.”

Sam turned around and went back into the building, Duncan following behind her. She rode the elevator up to the top floor and found Ralph’s suite. She knocked but he wasn’t in. They went back down to the restaurant near the lobby and saw Ralph sitting by himself, sipping a beer. They sat across from him.

“Tell me it isn’t true,” Sam said.

“You’re leaving, Sam. That’s all there is to it.”

“Not that.”

He glared at her a moment. “Then I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Ralph, we’ve known each other a long time. I can tell when you’re bullshitting me.”

He nodded, looking down to his beer and absently peeling off the label. “Who told you?”

“Benjamin Cornell.”

“Little prick. If I find out who leaked it to him I’ll have their asses.”

“I don’t believe this is happening. And you’re so calm about it. Like it just happens every day.”

“How would you like me to be, Sam? We’re talking about the deadliest virus in history coming out of the jungle and infecting this island. Thank God it was an island and not Los Angeles or Seattle. This is an extinction event. Agent X is the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs. We can’t risk its release no matter the cost.”

“This is…I can’t believe we’re even talking about this. Ralph there are hundreds of thousands of people on this island that aren’t infected.”

“And I feel for them, I really do. But there’s nothing that can be done.” He leaned back, taking a sip of his beer. “Besides, I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to. The military’s taken over. They think it’s a national security threat, which it is. This is the official decision.”

Sam shook her head. “We’re the monsters Cornell thinks we are.”

Ralph laughed. “Don’t be so dramatic. What did you think this job was, Dr. Bower? As a physician you make life and death calls. What does it matter if it’s over one person in an ER or on the scale of an island?”

“Ralph, please, don’t do this.”

Duncan jumped in, “There are alternatives. We can request volunteers, not just from here, from all over.”

“And what happens if one of those volunteers gets infected and we don’t catch it when they decide to come home? Do you have any idea what a virus like this could do in a major city? Pushkin’s run the numbers. Within ten days, fourteen percent of the population of the United States would be infected. Within twenty-five days, it would be sixty percent. Within a month, ninety-eight percent would be infected. We’re not talking H1N1, we’re talking Armageddon.”

Samantha rose. “There are some things you don’t do, even at the risk of your own life. You’re giving these people a death sentence. And I can’t be a part of it.”

“You want to quit? Quit. It won’t change anything. You’re still on that plane.”

“I’m going to stop this.”

“Feel free. I think it’s probably time for you to learn that there are things beyond your influence.”

Duncan gently put his hand on her arm. “Let’s go, Sam. There’s nothing we can do here.”

As they walked out of the restaurant, Sam kicked over the trashcan outside and began to pace.

“Feel better?” Duncan said.

“What can we do, Duncan? These people are all going to die. They asked for help from their government and we’re going to abandon them.”

“Sometimes there is nothing you can do. You just have to do the best you can and hope it works out.”

She shook her head, her thumbnail in her mouth as she paced back and forth across the hotel’s entrance. “There’s got to be something…we’re not helpless in this.”

Benjamin Cornell was waiting on the hood of a car and he hopped off and came over to them. “So?”

They didn’t respond and he grinned. It wasn’t a happy grin; it was filled with melancholy. As if he were sad he had been proved right.

“I thought so,” Benjamin said.

Duncan was about to grab Sam and leave when Benjamin heard her say, “There has to be something we can do.”

“There is,” Benjamin said.

“Sam, we’re ending this conversation. We’re not helping him do anything.”

Sam ignored Duncan. “What?” she said to Benjamin.

“Iquitos, Peru,” he said. “The woman that survived. They’ve cancelled the expedition to find her. Only one known survivor of this thing and they’re going to completely ignore her.” He glanced around and saw Ralph Wilson leaving the building, surrounded with men in suits, discussing something. Ralph saw them and shook his head before entering a Jeep. “I’m not going to ignore her,” Benjamin said. “Why don’t you come with me and meet some of our people to talk this over?”

“No,” Duncan said. “Sam, this guy is a borderline terrorist.”

“Why, because I don’t accept everything my government tells me? My father fought in Vietnam, young kid of seventeen. He was so patriotic he lied about his age to fight. He got sprayed with Agent Orange by his own government and died of cancer nine years later. That’s the government you work for, Dr. Adams. So don’t you dare tell me I’m the terrorist.”

“Stop it, you two,” Sam said. “Duncan, I’m going to go with him. Are you coming with me or not?”

“Sam-”

“No, I’m not sitting by and watching these people die. I have to do something.”

“Why? You don’t even believe in a God; what does it matter to you if these people die?”

“It matters to me because I’ve devoted my life to helping people. God or not, I couldn’t live with myself if I just went back to Atlanta and pretended like these people didn’t exist.” She turned to Benjamin. “Be honest with me: why do you want me to come?”

“An honest question, and I have an honest answer: This woman may not come back with us. She may not even want to talk to us. But I think I can convince her to give us some blood and tissue samples, or maybe the hospital still has some. But I need a laboratory, a very advanced laboratory in a BSL 4 environment to analyze them.”