John Ringo: Under a Graveyard Sky

When the young ladies he met in clubs asked him what he did he generally just said “Investment Banking” because that meant he had money and he’d get laid. Well, the dancers and actresses. The Goth and Emo chicks at the alternative clubs seemed to prefer his other answer: “I’m the bad guy that gets killed second to last in the movie. You know when the villain turns to his boss henchman and says ‘Take care of it’? I’m that guy.” With some who were way out there, this occasionally backfired. The one time he got a call to come help him move a body he’d agreed to meet her, asked where, then politely called the police. Fortunately, it turned out to be an OD and NYPD had limited their questions.

In fact he had yet to be told to “take care of it” in any extreme manner. When he’d taken the job he’d wondered if dirty work was in the offing and even, tactfully, checked during the very long vetting process. The response had been, for bankers, humorous at best. Bankers didn’t have to have their employees kill, defame or otherwise destroy enemies. There were lots of people that just did it for them because, well, people wanted their money. When a new dam was being negotiated in some developing country, it wasn’t banks who paid “laborers” to go beat up “protestors.” That was the local government who was going to make money off of the dam. To the extent that investment banks did anything along those lines, it was to quietly protest “No. Stop. No. Seriously… It looks bad…” And then lend them money anyway.

Tom was still unsure if he was disappointed or relieved. Most of his job came down to making sure that servers had distant off-line backups and checking to see what Shining Path was up to lately.

Saturday morning was not a normal time for all the senior executives of the Bank of the Americas to meet. And since they were only one of many such groups meeting all over the world on this particular Saturday, the cat was going to be out of the bag by noon, latest.

“This is the issue,” Tom said, bringing up a photo of the pathogen in question. “The pathogen is currently called H7D3. There is no common name associated. It is definitely man-made and has been widely spread. Spread method is currently unknown. Currently there are no manifestos or declarations related to it. FBI is trying to trace the source but they’re barely getting started and this isn’t the movies. They don’t find the culprits overnight if ever. For details on the pathogen and immunological response I’m going to turn this over to Dr. David Curry. Dr. Curry is a virologist who has consulted with us on emergency response as well as business risk management in biological investments. Dr. Curry.”

“I always start with ‘excuse mah accent.’” Dave Curry was a bit under six feet tall with dark brown hair and bright brown eyes. “I was born in lower Alabama and ain’t quite got rid of my drawl.

“The pathogen is, as Mr. Smith noted, definitely man-made, antiviral resistant and very sophisticated. For one thing it is both an airborne pathogen and a blood pathogen. First one of those in, well, ever . Otherwise I won’t bore you gentlemen with the technical details, they’re in my lecture notes. Progress appears to be as follows: Normal flu nonsymptomatic infective period of about five to seven days. To refresh you from Swine flu: Influenza, unlike some other stuff like SARS, is infectious for a period of time, generally around seven days, before you get your first sniffle or fever. Which, by the way, is a bugger and a half. Individuals are, again, nonsymptomatic but infecting everyone and every thing they come into contact with. And it means that the origin, assuming some sort of device, is going to be hard to pin down. Then flu like symptoms. No major differences between this and any other sort of flu. Somewhat worse than seasonal but not as bad as, say, swine flu or SARS. Not a patch on avian flu. But it’s extremely infective. Upper respiratory, which is the easy stuff to catch. Lots of coughing, hacking, spitting, and occasional pneumonia for those who are susceptible. Current model is about five percent mortality in the flu stage, mostly in the old and young. Not much worse, as I said, than seasonal. Usually lasts twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Then there’s a dead period. Most symptoms except low-grade fever disappear. This is the first point that it becomes non flulike.

“After a period they’re trying to pin down, looks like two to five days, neurological symptoms start. Probably, and it’s only probably , that is the point where subjects become blood pathogen infectious and may, again, may , no longer be airborne infectious. Best to assume all subjects are both vectors until we’ve got a better handle on this. Initial presentation of neurological symptoms are, in no particular order, palsy, disorientation, dizziness, blurred vision and, notably, formication. Note: I said ‘for- mi -cation.’ This refers to a form of paresthesia or ‘itching, tingling’ which feels like ants crawling on or biting the skin. Series of presentation is somewhat random but at a certain point the patient tends to strip to get the ‘spiders’ or ‘ants’ off.”

“Strip?” Richard said.

“Yes,” Tom said. “In all of the cases that have come to the attention of the police, the subject has been naked.”

“That seems…” Dr. Bradford J. Depene was not as tall as his boss, by nearly a foot, but he weighed at least twice as much. He and Tom were not by any stretch of the imagination best buddies. Depene had been born with a silver spoon and had apparently used it as hard as he possibly could his whole life. Tom really wasn’t as bothered by the gross obesity as by the fact that while unquestionably brilliant, Depene had the common sense of a duckling. “That seems sort of…”

“The term you’re looking for is obscene,” Richard said. “Any idea…why? Just for the embarrassment factor? Pornographic?”

“If it’s intentional, it’s smart,” Dr. Curry said. “But can I cover that later?”

“Continue,” Bateman said.

“After the formication period things vary. There are so far twenty-four identified patients in the U.S. None of those have gone through the full series while under observation. Most have presented symptoms outside quarantine: In other words they were picked up by the cops as crazy, naked people before they were identified as being H7 infected. There have been nine of those in the U.S. so far who were in advanced neurological stage. One has died while under care and one is critical. That’s not a statistical study but it looks as if this is also a real killer neurologically.”

“Twenty percent death rate?” Bateman asked.

“Right at that is what it looks like,” Curry said, shrugging. “Data is still firming up. However, in the meantime they’re a handful. ‘Extreme homicidal psychosis with reduced mental capacity’ is the current psychobabble diagnosis. Think lobotomized and violent as hell. Very bitey. No coherent sentient response. No language per se. Just basically animal responses and aggressive animals at that. L.A. General is starting to fill up their padded rooms. One customer per or they try to kill each other.

“Currently there’s a statistical lean to male. Of the twenty-four, sixteen are male. All three of the terminal were male, two of the three critical are male. But that could be from any number of factors including where the infection started and how it spread. SARS looked male leaning for a while due to how it was spreading. Again, we’ll know more in a week. They’re still examining suspect patients and known subjects who are identified as infected or probably infected. There’s a slightly less strong lean to male among those. Stats and other indicators as well as potential treatments will start firming up over the next few days. Again, first identification as an outbreak was only yesterday. These are early days.”