Scott Sigler: Ancestor

The images made Paul’s stomach pinch—especially images of women. Pink froth covering their mouths, dead eyes staring out. They reminded him of the incident three years ago. Like Pons, Paul had been forced to make a call… and Clarissa Colding had died.

Paul took a breath and tried to force the thoughts away. He had a job to do. “General, when was the first confirmed infection?”

“Less than thirty-six hours ago,” Curry said, then checked his watch. “Based on Matal’s notes, he shot seven. Twenty died due to infection. Whatever this bug is, it moves fast.”

An understatement. Paul had never seen an infection move that quickly, kill that quickly. No one had.

“The facility’s contamination control readings are in the green,” Curry said. “Only two ways in, negatively pressurized airlocks and both fully functional. Air purification systems online and A-OK.”

Paul nodded. Negative pressure was key. If there were any breaks in the facility’s walls, doors or windows, fresh air would push in as opposed to contaminated air escaping out . “And you’re sure the entire staff is accounted for?”

Curry nodded. “Novozyme ran a tight ship. The administration helped us locate anyone who wasn’t in the building at the time of lockdown. They’ve all been quarantined, and none show symptoms thus far. It’s contained.”

On the screen, Matal’s crawling slowed. His breaths came more rapidly, each accompanied by the ragged sound of flapping phlegm. Paul swallowed hard. “Did Doctor Matal make any disease-specific notes for us?”

Curry picked up a clipboard and passed it over. “Matal said it was a new Flu-A variant. Something from the pigs. Zeno zoo nose, I think it was.”

“Xenozoonosis,” Paul said, pronouncing the word slowly as zee-no-zoo-no-sis .

“That’s it,” Curry said. “Matal said it was worse than the Spanish flu of 1918.”

Paul quickly flipped through the notes. Matal hadn’t had time to properly type the virus, but he’d theorized it was an H5N1 variant or a mutation of H3N1. Paul scanned the lines, dreading what he’d see and wincing when he finally did—Matal’s staff had tried oseltamivir and zananivir, the two antivirals known to weaken swine flu. Neither had done a thing.

“I’m not a scientist, Fischer,” General Curry said. “But I know enough to realize a virus isn’t going to kill everyone . I’m surprised a civilian like Matal would shoot his own people.”

“He saw how fast it spread, had no way to stop it. Matal decided the death of him and his staff was preferable to the potential death of millions.”

“Oh, come on,” Curry said. “I’m not about to go licking that pinkish goo off Matal’s chin or anything, but how bad can it be?”

“The 1918 epidemic killed fifty million people. World population was just two billion people back then. Now it’s almost seven billion. Same kill-rate today, you’re looking at seventy million dead. No planes back then, General. There weren’t even highways yet. Now you can fly anywhere in the world in less than a day, and people do, all the time.”

“But we just had a swine flu,” Curry said. “That H1N1 thing. That killed, what, a few thousand people? Regular old, standard-issue flu kills a quarter million people a year. So pardon my layman’s approach, Fischer, but I’m not buying into the H1N1 pandemic crap.”

Paul nodded. “H1N1 wouldn’t have killed anyone in the Novozyme facility. They have medical facilities, doctors, antivirals… they knew what they were doing. This isn’t a third-world shit hole, this is a world-class biotech facility. And pandemic is just a term to describe infection over a wide area. The first H1N1 case was reported in Mexico. Just six weeks after that report, it was confirmed in twenty-three countries. It was global. Had that been Matal’s virus, you’d be looking at a seventy-five percent lethality rate across the whole damn world. You know how many people that would kill?”

“Five billion,” Curry said. “Yeah, I can count. Can you believe they actually make you pass math to be a general?”

“Sorry, sir,” Paul said.

Curry watched Matal. The general seemed to chew on imaginary gum for a few seconds before he spoke. “Fischer, you paint a fucking scary picture.”

“Yes sir. That I do.”

Two more chews of imaginary gum, then a pause. “I know what I’d do if I was in your shoes. I’d go all-in. Balls-deep.”

“And if I want to go all-in, General,” Paul said, opting out of the phrase balls-deep . “What are the choices?”

“We’ve got the full cooperation of the Danish government and Greenland’s prime minister. They want this thing wiped out, so they’ll back up whatever story we provide. Thule’s got a Bone online with eight BLU-96s.”

Paul nodded. A Bone , meaning a B1 bomber. BLU-96s were two-thousand-pound fuel-air explosive bombs. At a predetermined height, the bombs opened and spread atomized fuel that mixed with surrounding air, creating a cloud of highly volatile fuel-air mixture. Once ignited, the temperatures reached around two thousand degrees Fahrenheit, incinerating everything in a one-mile radius—including the viruses and anything they were in, or on.

“General, do we have any other options?”

“Sure,” Curry said. “Two more. We can deploy teams in biohazard gear to examine the place, take the risk of some minor, careless act letting the virus get out, or we can cut our losses and go Detroit on it.”

Paul looked at the general. “A nuke? You’ve got a nuke?”

“Less than a megaton,” Curry said. “But you can kiss everything within a three-mile radius adios. I’ve got evac choppers standing by. We get our people to a safe distance, leave everything here, then light the Christmas tree.”

Curry was serious. A damn nuke . Fischer looked at a monitor that displayed a view just outside the Novozyme facility. It showed the pigs mucking about outside one of the barns. Matal and Novozyme had hoped to turn these pigs into a herd of human organ donors. They had been studying xenotransplantation , the science of taking parts of one animal and putting them into another. Hundreds of biotech companies were pursuing similar lines of research, and each line carried a remote danger. Remote, but real, as the scene before them so aptly demonstrated.

Ironically, the pigs didn’t look sick at all. They looked as happy as pigs can—eating, digging at the half-frozen, muddy ground, sleeping. Paul felt oddly sad that the animals had to die.

“How long for the B1 to drop the fuel bombs?”

“Two minutes from my order,” Curry said. “The Bone is on station now.”

Paul nodded. “Do it.” He hoped the bombs would land soon enough to end Matal’s pain before the lungs fully gave out.

Curry picked up a phone and made a simple order: “It’s a go.”

On the monitor, a new coughing fit clenched Matal’s body into a fetal position. He thrashed weakly, then rolled onto his back. His arms reached straight up, his fingers curled like talons. He managed one more ragged breath, then another cough shook his body. Blood shot out of his mouth like a spurt from a fire hose, so powerful it splashed against the fluorescent lights above. His body went limp, wet red still burbling up on his lips and dripping down on him from the ceiling.

“Man,” Curry said. “That is truly fucked up.”

Paul had seen enough. “I need a secure line out.”

Curry pointed to another phone, this one built into the equipment-thick control panel. “That’s a straight line to Langley. Longworth is waiting for your call.”

Murray Longworth. Assistant director of the CIA and dotted-line boss of Paul’s special threats division of USAMRIID. Longworth oversaw an unnamed group combining elements of CIA, FBI, USAMRIID, Homeland and other departments, a force tasked with combating biologically related threats. The legality? Questionable, at best. The secrecy? Absolute. The authority? There was never really any question about that, not when Murray Longworth spoke with the voice of the president himself.