Ken McClure - The Lazarus Strain

‘But this is terrible!’ exclaimed Leila.

‘But it does explain why so many people have been asking you about the progress of your vaccine strain,’ said Steven.

‘Of course,’ said Leila. ‘They think someone is going to use the Cambodia 5 strain as a weapon and they need the vaccine.’

‘We know that they didn’t manage to get their hands on the concentrated, pure virus, which Devon had in the special safe in his room, but there is a very real chance that they will be able to recover it from the infected monkey if that’s really what all this is about. I say “if” because this is still all conjecture.’

‘It doesn’t bear thinking about,’ said Leila.

‘I’m afraid it does,’ said Steven. ‘A great deal of thinking about, but not necessarily by us and certainly not tonight. What d’you say we have an evening without talk of labs and viruses and “what-ifs”?’

Leila appeared to relax. She smiled and said, ‘Agreed, but thank you for telling me, Steven.’

It was just after midnight when they got back to the cottage. ‘Would you like to come in for coffee… if you don’t freeze before it’s ready?’ asked Leila.

Steven walked her up the path to the door with his arm round her shoulder. ‘Brr, you’re right,’ he said as they got inside and didn’t notice any perceptible change in temperature. ‘Don’t you have any other form of heating?’

‘There is an old electric fire in the bedroom,’ said Leila. ‘It keeps me alive while I’m dressing. Why don’t you bring it through while I make the coffee?’ She pointed to an arched wooden door. ‘Through there.’

Steven ducked his head and walked through. The whole house seemed to smell of cold and damp although it was mixed with a hint of Anais anais perfume in Leila’s bedroom. He smiled as the thought occurred to him that he had made it into Leila Martin’s bedroom and he couldn’t resist a sideways glance at the bed where an old fashioned patchwork quilt sat on top of what appeared to be a mountain of blankets in front of a dark mahogany headboard. He unplugged the ancient, one bar electric fire that sat in the middle of the floor: it had rust patches all over its reflective back plate and a badly frayed flex. He brought it through to the living room and plugged it into the wall. The smell of burning dust started to compete with the smell of damp.

‘Thank you so much for tonight,’ said Leila as she came through from the kitchen with two steaming mugs of coffee. ‘It was so nice to escape for a while.’

‘Then we must do it again,’ said Steven.

‘That would be nice,’ agreed Leila. ‘But I have a vaccine to make and so many people seem to be depending on it… Excuse me… I’ll just have to put on a sweater.’ Leila shivered and rubbed her arms before disappearing into the bedroom and coming back a few moments later wearing a heavy knit sweater over her ‘little black number’. She hugged herself with crossed arms and Steven smiled as she re-joined him on the couch. ‘You have an open fireplace,’ he said. ‘It’s just a question of getting something to burn in it, logs, coal…’

‘Maybe start with the furniture,’ said Leila, looking about her.

Steven conceded that she had a point. The cottage appeared to have been furnished from jumble sales of long ago.

They finished their coffee and Leila said, ‘Well, I should really get some sleep now.’

‘Me too,’ agreed Steven. ‘I’ve got an early start. I have to drive to London for a meeting at the Home Office.’

‘About the virus?’ asked Leila.

‘And what they intend doing about it should it get free,’ said Steven, getting to his feet.

‘Thank you again,’ said Leila, getting up too.

‘Don’t mention it.’ Steven leaned towards her and kissed her gently on the lips, hoping she wouldn’t pull away but giving her the opportunity. When she didn’t, he put his arms round her and brought her closer. She seemed to melt into him easily enough and the surprise he felt when she parted lips brought on such a feeling of excitement that he moved his hands down her back, over the hem of the long sweater and on to her bottom. He felt a resistance begin in Leila’s body and relaxed his grip. ‘Not tonight,’ she murmured in his ear.

‘I’d like to see you again,’ Steven said.

‘You will,’ said Leila. ‘Now go before we both freeze to death.’

The hubbub in the room died down as the Home Office minister brought the meeting to order. ‘I need hardly remind you why we are here, ladies and

gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Sci-Med have identified and reported to the Earlybird committee what might well be a serious threat to the security of our country and we are here to consider our response. For once, we know what the threat is rather than having to deal with a vague notion. It’s the Cambodia 5 virus and you have all been briefed on its capabilities.’

‘There was no mention in the briefing notes of a mortality rate for Cambodia 5,’ interrupted one of the intelligence services people.

Nigel Lees accepted the nod from the Home Office minister and answered. ‘That’s because we simply don’t know,’ he said. ‘There has never been an outbreak of Cambodia 5 to provide us with precedent. If it should turn out to be similar to the 1918 flu virus, we can expect something around 30 percent fatality. If the very worst should happen and the avian mortality rate should prove transferable to humans then we could be looking at… 90 percent?’

There were gasps around the table. ‘Nine out of ten will die?’

‘If the very worst comes to the very worst.’

‘The key to dealing with the problem is isolation,’ said Lees. ‘And the key to that is preparation. We must be on the look-out at all times. The merest suspicion of people going down with flu must be acted upon and the victims kept in isolation to contain spread of the disease. There’s no treatment for the virus and as yet — although we are hopeful — no vaccine against it, so the only way to stop it is to prevent people getting it in the first place. Warnings are being sent out to all hospitals, clinics and doctors’ surgeries. Vigilance is the key.’

Vigilance is the key, thought Steven. Another bloody sound bite. Did the whole world speak in them these days?

‘How much time do we have?’ asked a woman from the General Nursing Council.

The question was passed to a man identified as a microbiologist attached to Defence Intelligence Services. ‘That rather depends on who the opposition are and how well they are organised.’

‘So you don’t know for sure that it’s al-Qaeda?’

‘Far from it, all we have to go on is that one is named “Ali” and they all look Indian or Pakistani. Even that’s not reliable as the witness wasn’t capable of that degree of identification.’

‘Ye gods,’ said someone and there were sighs of agreement.

‘The fact that they would need decent lab facilities and the wherewithal to isolate and grow up pure virus from the escaped monkey tends to work in our favour,’ said the microbiologist. ‘Even if they’ve got suitable premises, it will still take some time to obtain enough pure virus to mount an attack of sufficient magnitude to ensure an epidemic. It has to be grown up in fertile hens’ eggs.’

‘Strikes me that not too many people order up fertile hens’ eggs,’ said Steven. ‘That might be a way of getting to them.’

‘DIS are on that as we speak,’ smiled the microbiologist.

‘You don’t think they’ll just infect a few people and let nature take its course?’ suggested someone else. ‘It is highly infectious.’

‘We think not. The newspaper stories will have alerted them to the fact that we didn’t fall for the animal rights motive at the Crick so they know that all GPs and hospitals will have been warned to be on the look-out for flu in the coming months. We think they’ll hold off and go for the big hit — always assuming that they have the lab facilities.’